The United States has commended the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for its operational successes, particularly the busting of four Mexican-linked methamphetamine laboratories this year.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) for Africa and the Middle East, Michael Gonzales, gave the commendation on Tuesday, during a visit to the NDLEA national headquarters in Abuja, where he was received by the Chairman/CEO, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd).
Gonzales, who assumed office four months ago, described Nigeria as the clear choice for his first foreign visit since assuming office.
He said he chose Nigeria first because of its status as a leader and economic powerhouse on the continent and the NDLEA’s impressive record.
Gonzales 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 make 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 described the four meth lab busts recorded this year as proof of best-practice tradecraft.
“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,” he said.
Gonzales noted that narcotics affect American communities more tangibly than almost any other foreign policy issue and that the drug trade knows no boundaries.
“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,” he said.
He explained that over 40 years of INL partnership globally has taken the form of training and equipment donations in Nigeria, and warned that 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 deadlier synthetics.
In his remarks, Marwa said the partnership built through INL assistance and the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s cooperation is a shared investment in the collective security of both nations.
“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.
“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 US dollars 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,” he said.
Marwa said the cartels were seeking a West African corridor to ship industrial quantities of meth to Europe, Asia and America.
“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. Especially taking into consideration the President Trump hammer that is smashing cartel traffic enroute America. These cartels are now seeking alternative routes to get to the same America. Every Meth producing laboratory that we shut down is a supply line that never reaches an American street, and every cartel operative we arrest is one fewer in the pipeline. Our forensic chemists, our investigators and our tactical teams are, in effect, forward defence for communities in the United States,” he said.
The NDLEA boss said INL assistance underpins the agency’s forensic and chemical analysis, training and equipment capabilities, which have yielded the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders including 250 barons, seizure of over 15.8 million kilograms of illicit drugs and conviction of 16,691 traffickers in the last five years.
He warned that any withdrawal of INL support would leave a gap that criminal networks would exploit and asked Gonzales to carry a message to Washington that INL support “as is, should be maintained if not increased.”