The United States has hailed the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), led by Buba Marwa, for busting four Mexican methamphetamine laboratories in 2026 and other efforts to fight drug trafficking locally and internationally.
The NDLEA spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, said in a statement that the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, Michael Gonzales, made the commendation on Tuesday.
Mr Gonzales had visited the NDLEA national headquarters in Abuja, where he was received by Mr Marwa and the management team.
The U.S. official, who assumed office in June 2026, said he chose Nigeria for his first visit because of the NDLEA’s “leadership and the impressive wins”, as well as the agency’s partnership with the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).
“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,” Mr Gonzales said.
According to him, the U.S. pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere has pushed trafficking flows toward Africa, Europe and Oceania.
He called for sustained action against transnational criminal organisations as a network, including the money flows that facilitate them.
In his remarks, Mr Marwa said the partnership, built through INL’s institutional assistance and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s cooperation with the NDLEA, is a shared investment in both nations’ collective security.
“The Mexican cartel threat is real, and we are confronting it,” the NDLEA boss said, recalling that operatives recently dismantled what he called the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State.
He said operatives arrested three Mexican meth experts and their Nigerian collaborators, with illicit substances worth $360 million recovered.
Mr Marwa also cited raids on industrial-scale laboratories in Tapa village, Oyo State, and in Enugu and Ebonyi states, where a Mexican drug expert and four Nigerian collaborators were arrested.
“These were not isolated incidents,” he said. “They show a deliberate attempt to turn Nigeria into a manufacturing hub.”
Mr Marwa warned that the cartels were seeking to use Nigeria as a corridor to smuggle methamphetamine to Europe, Asia and the U.S. amid Mr Trump’s crackdown on drug trafficking.
“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.
He added that the INL’s partnership with the NDLEA has fuelled the NDLEA’s offensives, leading to the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders, the seizure of over 15.8 million kilogrammes of illicit drugs, and the conviction of 16,691 in five years.
Mr Marwa warned that any withdrawal of INL support would leave a gap for criminal networks and terrorist groups to exploit.
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