The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has revealed that it has seized over 1 billion opioids mainly tramadol and more than 14.4 million bottles of codeine syrup between January 2024 and June 2025.
The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Marwa (Rtd) made the disclosure on Wednesday during a virtual meeting between him and the Director General of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of India, Mr. Anurag Garg along with top officials of the two anti-narcotics agencies.
At the meeting, both agencies agreed to intensify their efforts in the fight against shipment of illicit drugs between the two countries especially the illegal flow of opioids such as tramadol and codeine-based syrup to Nigeria from the South Asian country.
In his remarks, Marwa, while noting the threat posed to public health and security by illicit drugs in both Nigeria and India, emphasized the need to strengthen the existing partnership between NDLEA and NCB based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the two agencies in 2023.
The anti-narcotics czar also asked the NCB to assist NDLEA in specialized trainings, even as he acknowledged that operatives of the Nigerian agency “have had training in the past from India on drugs and investigation, training for analysts, financial investigation, cyber training, the dark web and so on”.
Responding, the NCB boss, Anurag Garg, said it is essential for the two agencies to strengthen the existing partnership because the drug problem cuts across international borders. He assured of their readiness to share knowledge, intelligence and experience with NDLEA on a number of areas of interest.
“We all know that there are transnational syndicates involved in the illicit drug shipments into Nigeria but we’re ready to work with you on this. Unless we come together, we cannot end this malady because we’re dealing with transnational drug syndicates, they have no respect for borders, national laws. So, the only method as of now is to collaborate, and it is a good opportunity, I mean, this meeting, we can take this initiative forward.
Garg expressed the readiness of the NCB to offer training to their Nigerian counterparts.
“We have a training centre where we will be happy to host you for any training. I mean, as per your need, we can have a curated training programme through which we will be very happy to share whatever we know on the subject of clandestine labs or precursors or darknet monitoring or investigating darknet vendors and so on and so forth”, Garg said.
