Nigerian anti-narcotics authorities have dismantled a methamphetamine cartel with Mexican links, arresting a suspected drug baron, three foreign nationals and six alleged local collaborators in what officials described as the country’s largest-ever seizure of the drug.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said on Wednesday that it had seized 2,419.48 kg of chemical materials, including finished and liquid methamphetamine, precursor chemicals and industrial solvents. Its Special Operations Unit carried out “well-coordinated, simultaneous strikes” in Ogun and Lagos states after months of intelligence gathering.
The raids targeted a remote farm in Abidagba forest, in Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State, which the agency said was being used as a “massive, highly dangerous clandestine methamphetamine laboratory” by the trafficking organization of Nigerian drug baron Anochili Innocent.
NDLEA chief Mohamed Buba Marwa put the international market value at $362.9 million. Marwa said the network “did not just traffic drugs” but was “actively manufacturing industrial-scale quantities” of illicit substances in the West African country.
Seven men were arrested at the forest lab, including four Nigerians aged 23 to 42 and three Mexican nationals aged 40 to 51. Marwa described the foreigners as “technical experts” brought into the country to “cook this deadly substance.” Innocent, the alleged mastermind, was arrested at his residence in the Lakowe area of Lagos State.
“The arrest brings to ten the total number of cartel members” in custody, the NDLEA chief said, warning cartels that Nigeria is “a hostile territory for their business.”
Marwa said the latest raid came barely two weeks after it announced the takedown of another drug trafficking lab headed by Simon Amadi in a multi-country operation involving US, Swiss, French, and Greek law enforcement agencies.
Nigeria has faced growing concern over drug trafficking. A 2026 UN Office on Drugs and Crime paper said the country has “progressively emerged” from being a transit route into a hub for drug production, consumption, and international distribution.
In 2016, the NDLEA arrested four Mexicans and four Nigerians over a methamphetamine laboratory in Delta State. Last November, the agency reported the seizure of a 1,000 kg cocaine consignment worth about $235 million at Tincan Island Port in Lagos. Earlier that year, officials also arrested a 59-year-old businessman accused of ingesting 81 wraps of cocaine before attempting to board a flight from Lagos to Paris.