The United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) for Africa and the Middle East, Michael Gonzales has recommended the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for its operational successes, describing Nigeria as the clear reply for the primary nation to go to after his appointment.
Gonzales made the comment on Tuesday, twentieth October 2026, throughout a go to to the NDLEA nationwide headquarters in Abuja, the place he was acquired by the Chairman/CEO, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd), and members of the company’s administration group.
Gonzales, who assumed workplace 4 months in the past, mentioned he selected Nigeria first as a result of of its standing as a pacesetter and financial powerhouse on the continent, and since of the NDLEA’s management and the spectacular wins the company has recorded, including that he wished to see “firsthand where the magic happens.”
According to him, “I became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement just four months ago covering all countries of Africa and the Middle East. And when I was thinking where does it make the most sense to visit first, Nigeria was a clear answer. Because as a leader, as an economic powerhouse on the continent, but also particularly NDLEA for the leadership and the impressive wins that you and your team and your interagency counterparts have delivered time and again. In addition to the very robust partnership between INL and NDLEA, I wanted to see firsthand where the magic happens, as we say in the United States.”
He cited the 4 methamphetamine laboratory busts recorded this yr as proof of the company’s best-practice tradecraft: intelligence-led investigations, coordination throughout companies and borders, operational excellence, and diligent interrogation, investigation and prosecution.
He mentioned narcotics have an effect on American communities extra tangibly than virtually some other overseas coverage challenge, and that the drug commerce is worldwide, with only a few constraints. The work of INL and the NDLEA, he added, “fundamentally delivers for the Nigerian people, for the American people.”
In his phrases, “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. When I am talking to American audiences in the United States, I tell them there’s virtually no other issue of foreign policy that so tangibly affects the lives of every community, virtually every family across our country, than narcotics. And the reality of the narcotics trade is one that is international. 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.”
Gonzales famous that greater than 40 years of INL partnership with nations worldwide has taken the shape, in Nigeria, of coaching and gear donations. He mentioned intense US strain on cartels within the Western Hemisphere was like “squeezing a balloon,” pushing trafficking flows towards Africa and onward to Europe and Oceania. He additionally pointed to the shift from plant-based medication to harder-to-detect, deadlier synthetics, and referred to as for sustained motion in opposition to transnational legal organisations as a community, together with the cash flows that facilitate them.
In his remarks, Marwa mentioned the partnership, constructed via INL’s institutional help and the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s cooperation with the NDLEA is a shared funding within the collective safety of each nations.
According to him, “Crime has no borders, and neither does the risk. The medication we seize, the arms we intercept and the terrorist financing we hint usually are not separate issues. When we seize narcotics and illicit weapons in the identical operations and alongside the identical routes, we’re trying on the convergence of crime. Drug cash buys weapons, weapons maintain armed teams, and armed teams maintain terrorism. Terrorism has no borders. What festers within the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin doesn’t keep there, and what’s trafficked via West Africa doesn’t cease at our shoreline.
“The Mexican cartel risk is actual, and we’re confronting it. In current months, NDLEA operatives dismantled the biggest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever found in Nigeria, in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State the place we arrested three Mexican meth consultants and their Nigerian collaborators proper within the forest the place illicit substances value over $360 million US {dollars} have been recovered. Barely 4 weeks later, we raided one other industrial-scale laboratory at Tapa Village in neighbouring Oyo State and arrested a Mexican methamphetamine knowledgeable, introduced in for large-scale synthesis, along with 4 Nigerian collaborators. We have since dismantled an analogous facility in Enugu State and one other in Ebonyi state, South East Nigeria, all linked to the Mexican cartels. These weren’t remoted incidents. They present a deliberate try to show Nigeria into a producing hub.
“Let me be plain about why this matters to Washington. These cartels are not setting up in our forests to supply Nigerian consumers alone. They want a West African corridor to ship industrial quantities of methamphetamine to Europe, to Asia, and to American cities. Especially taking into consideration the President Trump hammer that is smashing cartel traffic enroute America. 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.”
While linking the convergence of medication, arms and terrorism, Marwa mentioned drug cash buys weapons, weapons maintain armed teams and armed teams maintain terrorism, and that what festers within the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin doesn’t keep there.
Marwa mentioned INL help underpins the company’s capabilities in forensic and chemical evaluation, skilled coaching, investigative and financial-crime expertise, and gear upkeep. “This great partnership has fueled our offensives that yielded the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders including 250 drug barons, the seizure of over 15.8million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs and conviction of 16, 691 drug traffickers including the kingpins, in the last five years”, he added.
Warning that any withdrawal of INL assist would depart a niche that legal networks and terrorist teams would exploit, Marwa requested Gonzales to hold a message to Washington: that INL assist, “as is, should be maintained if not increased.” He mentioned traffickers, arms sellers and terrorists cooperate throughout borders daily, and that governments confronting them should do the identical.
