Nigeria busts meth cartel in largest seizure, arrests kingpin
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E-mailBy Camillus Eboh
ABUJA, May 21 (Reuters) - Nigeria's anti-drug agency said it had dismantled a methamphetamine syndicate in the largest seizure of its kind in the country, seizing drugs and chemicals worth about $363 million and arresting 10 suspects, including three Mexicans.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said late on Wednesday that coordinated raids on a farm in Ogun state and linked properties in Lagos state, southwest Nigeria, uncovered an industrial-scale clandestine laboratory and yielded 2.4 tons of methamphetamine and chemical materials.
NDLEA chief Mohamed Buba Marwa said the operation, carried out over 48 hours after months of intelligence work, exposed a network importing foreign "technical expertise" to produce drugs locally.
Seven suspects, including three Mexicans described as meth "cooks", were arrested at the farm used as a lab in Ogun state's Abidagba forest, while the alleged mastermind, Anochili Innocent, a Nigerian, was detained at his Lagos residence. Follow-up operations brought total arrests to 10, the agency said.
The agency said the scale of the haul, equivalent to millions of street doses, highlighted a shift by drug cartels towards setting up production bases in Nigeria.
The crackdown underscores Nigeria's growing role as both a transit and manufacturing hub in the global illegal drugs trade.
Illegal trade has been growing in Nigeria and West Africa, where porous borders allow cartels to expand logistics networks and links to Latin American trafficking groups.
Marwa said the agency will step up its crackdown on local and transnational networks across the country.
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo:Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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