Mexican Cartels Eye Nigeria as Meth Production Hub – US

Mexican drug cartels are increasingly attempting to establish Nigeria as a manufacturing base for methamphetamine and an alternative trafficking route to Africa, a senior US official warned Tuesday, following the dismantling of four meth laboratories in the country this year.

Michael Gonzales, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, said the operations demonstrated the importance of Nigeria’s counter-narcotics campaign to both countries as Washington intensifies pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere.

Speaking at the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) headquarters in Abuja, Gonzales said the US pressure on cartels was effectively “squeezing a balloon,” forcing traffickers to seek routes through Africa to reach markets in Europe and beyond.

“The four meth lab busts just this year alone are a testament to the deployment of some of the best practices in our tradecraft,” Gonzales said, citing intelligence-based collection, cross-border coordination, and investigations.

He said the reality of the narcotics trade was international, stating, “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.” 

NDLEA Chairman Buba Marwa said the operations uncovered a deliberate attempt by Mexican cartels to establish Nigeria as a manufacturing hub.

He detailed the raids, including the largest clandestine meth laboratory ever found in the country, located in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State.

“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,” Marwa said.

“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.”

He said similar facilities were dismantled in Enugu and Ebonyi states. “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 methamphetamine to Europe, Asia, and American cities. “Especially taking into consideration the President Trump hammer that is smashing cartel traffic en route to America. These cartels are now seeking alternative routes to get to the same America,” he said.

“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,” he added. “Our forensic chemists, our investigators and our tactical teams are, in effect, forward defence for communities in the United States.”

Marwa said US support had contributed to the NDLEA’s recent results, including the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders, among them 250 drug barons, and the seizure of more than 15.8 million kilogrammes of illicit drugs in the last five years. He said 16,691 traffickers, including kingpins, had been convicted during the period.

He urged the US to maintain or increase its support, warning that criminal networks already operate across borders. “Traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists cooperate across borders every day, and governments confronting them must do the same,” he said.