US commends NDLEA for dismantling Mexican-linked meth labs

… as Marwa seeks continued support

The United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) for Africa and the Middle East, Michael Gonzales, has commended the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for its operational successes.

Gonzales made the remark on Tuesday, when he visited the NDLEA national headquarters in Abuja, where he was received by the Chairman and CEO, Brig-Gen. Mohamed Marwa (Rtd), and members of the agency’s management team.

Gonzales, who assumed office four months ago, said he chose Nigeria first because of its status as a leader and economic powerhouse on the continent, and because of the NDLEA’s leadership and the impressive wins the agency has recorded, adding that he wanted to see “firsthand where the magic happens.”

He said, “I became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement just four months ago, covering all countries of Africa and the Middle East. And when I was thinking where does it makes the most sense to visit first, Nigeria was a clear answer. Because as a leader, as an economic powerhouse on the continent, but also particularly NDLEA, for the leadership and the impressive wins that you and your team and your interagency counterparts have delivered time and again.

“In addition to the very robust partnership between INL and NDLEA, I wanted to see firsthand where the magic happens, as we say in the United States”, he said and cited the four methamphetamine laboratory busts recorded this year as proof of the agency’s best-practice tradecraft: intelligence-led investigations, coordination across agencies and borders, operational excellence, and diligent interrogation, investigation and prosecution.

He said narcotics affect American communities more tangibly than almost any other foreign policy issue, and that the drug trade is international, with very few constraints.

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“The four meth lab busts just this year alone is a testament to the deployment of some of the best practices in our tradecraft, the intelligence-based knowledge collection, the coordination across national lines and agency lines, the operational excellence that goes into the actual bust, and then the interrogations, the investigations and prosecutions.

“They’re all so critical because ultimately counter-narcotics work, the work that each of us does day in and day out truly delivers for the people. When I am talking to American audiences in the United States, I tell them there’s virtually no other issue of foreign policy that so tangibly affects the lives of every community, virtually every family across our country, than narcotics.

“And the reality of the narcotics trade is one that is international. It knows no boundaries, very few constraints. And so, the work that INL does in the United States and globally and the work that NDLEA does fundamentally delivers for the Nigerian people, for the American people.”

Gonzales noted that more than 40 years of INL partnership with countries worldwide has taken the form, in Nigeria, of training and equipment donations. He said intense US pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere was like “squeezing a balloon,” pushing trafficking flows toward Africa and onward to Europe and Oceania.

He also pointed to the shift from plant-based drugs to harder-to-detect, deadlier synthetics, and called for sustained action against transnational criminal organisations as a network, including the money flows that facilitate them.

In his remarks, Marwa said the partnership, built through INL’s institutional assistance and the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s cooperation with the NDLEA, is a shared investment in the collective security of both nations.

According to him, “Crime has no borders, and neither does the threat. The drugs we seize, the arms we intercept and the terrorist financing we trace are not separate problems. When we seize narcotics and illicit weapons in the same operations and along the same routes, we are looking at the convergence of crime. Drug money buys guns, guns sustain armed groups, and armed groups sustain terrorism. Terrorism has no borders. What festers in the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin does not stay there, and what is trafficked through West Africa does not stop at our coastline.

“The Mexican cartel threat is real, and we are confronting it. In recent months, NDLEA operatives dismantled the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever discovered in Nigeria, in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State, where we arrested three Mexican meth experts and their Nigerian collaborators right in the forest where illicit substances worth over $360 million were recovered.

“Barely four weeks later, we raided another industrial-scale laboratory at Tapa Village in neighbouring Oyo State and arrested a Mexican methamphetamine expert, brought in for large-scale synthesis, together with four Nigerian collaborators. We have since dismantled a similar facility in Enugu State and another in Ebonyi state, South East Nigeria, all linked to the Mexican cartels. These were not isolated incidents. They show a deliberate attempt to turn Nigeria into a manufacturing hub.

“Let me be plain about why this matters to Washington. These cartels are not setting up in our forests to supply Nigerian consumers alone. They want a West African corridor to ship industrial quantities of methamphetamine to Europe, to Asia, and to American cities”.

While linking the convergence of drugs, arms and terrorism, Marwa said drug money buys guns, guns sustain armed groups and armed groups sustain terrorism, and that what festers in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin does not stay there.

Marwa said INL assistance underpins the agency’s capabilities in forensic and chemical analysis, professional training, investigative and financial-crime skills, and equipment maintenance.

“This great partnership has fueled our offensives that yielded the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders, including 250 drug barons, the seizure of over 15.8million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs and the conviction of 16, 691 drug traffickers, including the kingpins, in the last five years”, he added and warned that any withdrawal of INL support would leave a gap that criminal networks and terrorist groups would exploit.