.

The first recorded case of a Nigerian smuggler transporting heroin in
bulk is that of Joe Brown Akubueze, who imported some 250 kilograms of
heroin from Thailand by sea, packed in water coolers, in December 1993.
He was arrested in Nigeria after a tip-off, and sentenced by a court to
115 years in prison, of which he served ten years before being released.
97
In retrospect, this was an early indicator of a move towards very large
shipments by air and sea, although the classic Nigerian courier trade still
remains as strong as ever. From the late 1990s, there were growing reports
of ‘very large consignments’ of drugs heading to West Africa ‘by ship or
commercial containers’, according to a police officer working for the UN.
98
In 2000, Cape Verdean authorities reported the interception of a ship in
the Caribbean heading to their country with 2.3 tonnes of cocaine.
99
In
2003, a massive cargo of 7.5 tonnes of cocaine was intercepted on a ship
enroutetoSpainviaCapeVerdeandSenegal.
100
In 2004, six people were
arrested in the Ghanaian port-city of Tema in possession of 588 kilograms of
cocaine from Colombia via Venezuela.
101
This was a particularly notorious
case because of the action of a judge who, amazingly, granted bail to the
accused, raising suspicions of corruption. In 2006, a boat was intercepted
97. Joe Brown Akubueze v The Federal Republic of Nigeria, 4 March 2003. Available via
Toma Micro Publishers Ltd.,
<
http://www.tomalegalretrieve.org/phplaw/site/index.php
>
(23
July 2008).
98. Flemming Quist, ‘Drug trafficking in West Africa 2000–2004 in an international per-
spective’ (UNODC workshop on West African organized crime, Dakar, 2–3 April 2004)

Nigerian traders especially were truly global. They took over heroin retail-
ing in Moscow. According to one veteran journalist, ‘the Central Asians
...
were being displaced from 1997 onwards by Africans, especially Nigerians,
who have established efficient and well-concealed networks for selling heroin
and cocaine in Moscow’s student living areas and university residences’.
74
Nigerians were particularly prominent in the North American heroin trade
until being displaced in recent years. In 1999, the US Department of Justice
said it was looking for two Nigerians who were said to be running a network
importing ‘up to 80 percent of the white heroin entering the USA from
southeast Asia’.
75
This high figure is less noteworthy than might appear
at first sight, as the US market for Asian heroin has lost ground to im-
ports from Latin America. In 2002, Dutch customs officers, in a controlled
experiment, for a period of ten days searched every Nigerian arriving in
Amsterdam from Aruba and the Dutch Antilles, a route used by many of
the 1,200 drug couriers arrested annually at Schiphol airport. They found
that of the 83 Nigerian passengers using this route during that period, no
fewer than 63 were carrying drugs.
76
In the same year, Nigeria’s NDLEA
arrested two Nigerians and one foreigner with 60 kilograms of cocaine, the
agency’s largest-ever cocaine find, on board a Brazilian vessel at Tin Can
Island wharf in Lagos.
77
Substantial though this haul was, perhaps its chief
significance lies in the evidence it presents of direct seaborne transport from
Latin America.
There was evidence that knowledge of the drug trade was being passed
from one generation to the next. Also in 2002, a twelve-year-old Nige-
rian boy with US citizenship was reportedly arrested at New York’s John
F. Kennedy airport with 87 condoms of heroin. He was the son of one
Chukwunwieke Umegbolu, who had been convicted in 1995 for his part
72. ‘Drug: NDLEA sends officers’ names to presidency’,
Guardian
, 9 November 1998.
73. See interview with General Bamaiyi in
Sunday Champion
, 20 June 1999.
74. John K. Cooley,
Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and international terrorism
(third
edition, Pluto Press, London and Sterling, VA, 2002), p. 143.
75. Laolu Akande, ‘Nigeria high on US fraud, drugs list’,
Guardian
, 18 August 1999.
76. UNODC,
Transnational Organized Crime in the West African Region
(New York, NY,
2005), p. 21.
77. Sisca Agboh, ‘NDLEA impounds N1b worth of cocaine’,
Post Express
(Lagos), 31 August
2002.
at Yale University on April 20, 2012
http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/
Downloaded from





By the mid-1990s, thus, some Nigerian drug traffickers in particular had
not only developed the means to invest in bulk shipments of narcotics, but
had also become fully global, having business associates in both produc-
ing and consuming countries as well as other facilities in countries outside
Nigeria. The same was true on a smaller scale of traffickers from other West
African countries, notably Ghana. By the same token, non-African traffick-
ers had become interested in the commercial advantages offered by West
Africa. Lebanese smugglers, Soviet gangsters, and South American drug
syndicates were among a variety of external interests attracted to the region
on account of its usefulness as an entrep
ˆ
ot.
79
In 2003, Senegal expelled a
senior member of the Sicilian mafia, Giovanni Bonomo, who was subse-
quently arrested in Italy. A known money launderer and drug trafficker, he
was said to have visited South Africa and Namibia regularly





The following paragraphs will briefly describe the classic structure of
the Nigerian drug trade, starting at the top of the ladder, so to speak,
by considering the category often labelled drug ‘barons’. In the words of
a senior Nigerian drug law-enforcement officer,
83
a Nigerian drug baron
requires at least three assets. First, he, or she, needs to be able to buy drugs
cheaply at source. As we have seen, from an early date, there were Nigerians
who travelled to producer countries in South America and south-east Asia
to buy drugs. In 2003, some 330 Nigerians were said to be serving prison
sentences in Thailand for drug-related offences.
84
Hundreds of Nigerians
were living in Bangkok, notably in the city’s Pratunum district that is home
to an African community some 500–800 strong. Many of these are occupied
in the textile or jewellery trades, but a significant number are alleged to have
interests in crime.
85
There are also substantial Nigerian communities in the
south Asian subcontinent, with over 2,000 Nigerians in Mumbai alone.
86
There is even a small Nigerian community in Afghanistan. A drug baron
who lives in one of these locations or has stayed there long enough to build
excellent local contacts is well placed to buy heroin. Sometimes, a baron who
has the wherewithal to buy a large quantity of cocaine or heroin at source
may sell this to a syndicate of smaller operators pooling their resources for
such a major purchase. In December 1997, John Ikechukwe, a Nigerian
who had emigrated to South Africa and become rich working the South
American route, was murdered after cheating some fellow-traders in such a
scheme. According to the South African police, 28 Nigerians were killed in
Johannesburg alone in the first quarter of 1998.
87
A second requirement for a drug baron is a good contact in the receiv-
ing country, generally North America in the case of heroin, or Europe in
the case of cocaine. North America and Europe have substantial Nigerian
communities, some of the millions of Nigerians who live outside their own
country. Even if most of these people live blameless lives, earning their
keep in respectable occupations, the existence of this diaspora nevertheless
constitutes a medium in which traffickers can move. Many Nigerian drug
barons keep a very low profile in order not to attract attention. The third
necessity for a drug baron is a substantial supply of capital to finance oper-
ations. This poses little problem to anyone who has already made a couple
83. Interview, Lagos, 24 October 2007.
84. ‘237 Nigerian drug convicts in arrive [sic] today’,
Guardian
, 29 March 2003.
85. ‘African community at Pratunum, Bangkok’ (paper presented by Royal Thai Police,
African Criminal Networks conference, Bangkok, 16–19 May 2005).
86. ‘Dongri nightlife’,
Time Out Mumbai
2
, 24 (July–August 2006),
<
http://www.
timeoutmumbai.net/mumbailocal/mumbailocal_details.asp?code
=
11&source
=
1
>
(24 November 2008).
87. ‘Nigerian drug barons invade South Africa’,
Guardian
, 11 April 1998.


An example is Ekenna O, first arrested in 1995
and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, and rearrested in October 2005.
At that point, his assets were over 500 million naira, or
$
4.16 million. He
owned three properties in Nigeria and several companies.
88
For purposes of transportation, a drug baron works with a second layer
of operators, known as ‘strikers’. This word is used in Nigeria in regard not
only to the drug trade, but also to a range of other criminal enterprises in
which a high degree of logistical expertise is necessary. A striker is someone
who can strike deals, quite likely a former courier who has entered the
business at the lowest level and worked his way up, acquiring an excellent
network of contacts. Many strikers are middle-aged, from their late thirties
upwards. A striker knows exactly who is the best person to approach for
forged documents or who is an expert packer of drugs. He receives a fee for
performing this type of service on behalf of a baron, and will typically work
with several such barons while remaining essentially self-employed. One of
the striker’s most important tasks is the recruitment of couriers, and one
of the features of the Nigerian system that makes effective police detection
so difficult is that the use of independent specialists provides a vital cut-out
between the top level of operation and the humble courier. A courier is
normally ignorant of the name, or even the very existence, of the baron
who is the real initiator of a drug transaction. If a courier is arrested, he or
she therefore cannot be prevailed upon to give vital information to police
officers. For this reason, strikers often try to recruit a stranger as a courier,
although friends and family may also be approached. A Nigerian striker
based in South Africa, for example, may recruit South African nationals,
or even better, South Africans with British passports. Gambia is a useful
transit point because of the existence of a substantial tourist trade, which
makes it easy for a courier to travel with a planeload of tourists, or to recruit
a holiday maker and persuade or trick them into acting as a courier. The
favourite recruits for strikers based in Nigeria itself are fellow-countrymen
who have residence permits for European or North American countries, or
Nigerians who possess foreign passports, the more prestigious the better.
Having recruited a courier, a striker will stay with the person until the point
of departure, a period often between a couple of days and a week, to make
sure they do not lose their nerve. In some cases, couriers are escorted to
religious oracles during this period to swear an oath. Relatives or home-boys
who have been recruited, and made to swear a solemn oath of loyalty, do
not easily betray their associates. They can also speak on the phone in ‘deep’
dialects of African languages, difficult for foreign police services to interpret
if the conversations are intercepted.
88. The name has been suppressed for legal reasons. Information obtained from official
source, Lagos, 24 October 2007.
at Yale University on April 20, 2012
http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/
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https://issafrica.org/acpst/uploads/Stephen_Ellis%20Drugs.pdf


IT IS REALLY PATHETIC

Various attempts have been made to profile Nigerian drug traffickers.
There is a general consensus among those who have attempted this that
the Nigerian narcotics trade is dominated by Igbo people. The Swiss police
are reported to have produced a more exact profile, even down to villages
of origin, via an analysis of patterns of arrest. Among Igbos themselves, it
is sometimes said that most narcotics traffickers come from one particular
Local Government Area. Ninety percent of those arrested are male.
92
How-
ever, the profiles that are widely used by European, North American and
south-east Asian authorities do not appear to include data from the con-
siderable number of Nigerians arrested for drug offences in Saudi Arabia,
which may well reveal a different social background.
89. Reuben Abati, ‘The hanging of Amara Tochi in Singapore’,
Guardian
, 28 January 2006.
90. Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), ‘An analysis of the drug trafficking
issues and trends at the Murtala Muhammed International airport, Ikeja, Lagos (MMIA)’
(unpublished paper, 7 pp., September 2007).



https://issafrica.org/acpst/uploads/Stephen_Ellis%20Drugs.pdf

Of course when you have a developer/flatron like Chukwudidumeme Onwuamadike aka Evans committing over 15 kidnappings in the South West, why wouldn't the South West be the kidnap capital....

FKO81:
.

Still, it remains
the ambition of many Igbo men to make money and buy land and build
an impressive house in their home village as a mark of their success. ‘Rich
cocaine pushers’ who hold extravagant parties to celebrate the acquisition
of a chieftaincy title are a recognizable social type.
96
According to Nigerian
police officers, those Igbos who dominate the drug trade do not normally
choose this career in order to become professional criminals in the Western
93. Franco Prina, ‘Trade and exploitation of minors and young Nigerian women for
prostitution in Italy’, 2003, Chapter 1,
<
http://www.unicri.it/wwd/trafficking/nigeria/docs/
rr_prina_eng.pdf
>
(24 November 2008).
94. Cf. Kate Meagher, ‘Social capital, social liabilities, and political capital: social networks
and informal manufacturing in Nigeria’,
African Affairs
105
, 421 (2006), pp. 553–82.
95. Stephen Ellis, ‘The Okija shrine: death and life in Nigerian politics’,
Journal of African
History
49
, 3 (2008), pp. 445–66.
96. Joe Igbokwe,
Igbos: 25 years after Biafra
(Advent Communications, no place given, 1995),
p. 40.
at Yale University on April 20, 2012
http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/
Downloaded from
190
AFRICAN AFFAIRS
sense, but primarily as an avenue to wealth and social esteem. Their use of
both traditional oracles and Christian rituals is thought to favour the drive
to personal achievement and social success.




https://issafrica.org/acpst/uploads/Stephen_Ellis%20Drugs.pdf

mercyville:

Nigerian narcotics trade is dominated by Igbo people.

While Yorubas dominate local drugs trafficking

Andrella51:



OK now I see

So which NCAN chapter do you belong?

Na this kind people dey tarnish our image here in India...

Oluwamuyeewa:
Eyin Omo oduduwa

We ought to have outgrown this Ncan of a thing,tribalism won't add a penny to our account or improve the standard of our lives,let he who have no sinned cast the first stone

Yoruba- yahoo/ritual
Igbo- drug trafficking/ kidnapping
Hausa- terrorism!B


We're not perfect,let's try to work together to make life better

You marginalised the house. You gave them only one vice, Yoruba two buses, yo7 come pack t&ree givë developers.

Oluwamuyeewa:
Eyin Omo oduduwa

We ought to have outgrown this Ncan of a thing,tribalism won't add a penny to our account or improve the standard of our lives,let he who have no sinned cast the first stone

Yoruba- yahoo/ritual
Igbo- drug trafficking/ kidnapping
Hausa- terrorism!B


We're not perfect,let's try to work together to make life better

You marginalised the housas. You gave them only one vice, Yoruba two vises, you come pack three givë developers.

SeyiIrawoDidan:
Yeye, even your pastors no dey carry last for rituals. Regarding your proclamation, I would probably die in my sleep anyway when I'm old and satisfied with age. Yours is the problem.

beta than killing pple 4 rituals.

Daboomb:




You see, I nor tell you.... Na dem again

slave of d north.

Dumaknesset:


Visited the site, SEUN should sue you guys for copyright infringements, when we say Yoruba blaze the trails and igbo copy, you will say no. Copy cats, copied nairaland like a miserable copy cat.

Oh you visited the site like me. They copied Seun's template without any noticeable creative variations or modifications. I was sickened at the sight of the kindergarten site.

avicenna1:
So which NCAN chapter do you belong?

don't belong to any oh lol

deepwater:
There is something terribly wrong in the land. Despite punitive measure and capital punishment on drug trafficking in Asia, people still get involved in it.

Is this for the passion to overcome the poverty in the family or just plain laziness to be engaged in a legit money making business.

I wish enough sensitization and awareness could be done in Nigeria. The expectation to get rich quickly as a young man and show off to people you don't really care about needs to stop.

Our girls keeping forming slay queens or whatever, putting 'maintenance' cost on the high that a modest young guy can't fund, hence the young blood be pushed to social vices to make bread come bigger and quicker.

It is so painful to have the youths of today either been jailed up abroad or killed like a rat in Nigeria just about every other week, and the old wines are still being re-corked for the next sale in 2019

Valid points here

Valid points

But is the water really so deep?

Chinedu Okarfor again? You can imagine how Igbos names are mentioned in crime related issues daily.

what's d meaning of NCAN ... abeg make una tell me

[quote author=FKO81 post=57427160][/quote]

But you equally knows it that those reports could only be media lies.

Lol Roger That, Razor61

enigmaticlion:
copy that, alpha, tango whiskey over and out.

If igbo separate from 9ja crime rate will reduce drastically

modsfucker:


But the crime is always associated with the tribe and religion when it comes from the North. Igbos are just too stupid to remain in Nigeria, let the ultimatum remains.

Can two wrongs make a right?

deepwater:
There is something terribly wrong in the land. Despite punitive measure and capital punishment on drug trafficking in Asia, people still get involved in it.

Is this for the passion to overcome the poverty in the family or just plain laziness to be engaged in a legit money making business.

I wish enough sensitization and awareness could be done in Nigeria. The expectation to get rich quickly as a young man and show off to people you don't really care about needs to stop.

Our girls keeping forming slay queens or whatever, putting 'maintenance' cost on the high that a modest young guy can't fund, hence the young blood be pushed to social vices to make bread come bigger and quicker.

It is so painful to have the youths of today either been jailed up abroad or killed like a rat in Nigeria just about every other week, and the old wines are still being re-corked for the next sale in 2019

Wow you just nailed the truth.
You deserve a kiss

see them ...no need to check names..they run d show home n away...look at his eyes..he even take some to get high before the journey..

kuchikau1:
Beta than killing pple( vagina and intestine hoarders) for rituals. Quote me and die in ur sleep.

shut up pls , what are u trying to justify here ?? ..i am not yoruba rememba

the way the igbos cast other tribes on here you will think they are the purest ... but each time u come across crime by a nigerian outside nigeria just know its an igbo person...

eflintsone:
shut up pls , what are u trying to justify here ?? ..i am not yoruba rememba

foolishness is wen u decide to deny ur tribe. Now fvck off my mention.

Oluwamuyeewa:
Eyin Omo oduduwa

We ought to have outgrown this Ncan of a thing,tribalism won't add a penny to our account or improve the standard of our lives,let he who have no sinned cast the first stone

Yoruba- yahoo/ritual
Igbo- drug trafficking/ kidnapping
Hausa- terrorism


We're not perfect,let's try to work together to make life better

Nobody chose is tribe from conception. We should all see ourselves as one. Tribalism will only generates trouble.

Let's condemn the act and not the tribe.

EgunMogaji:


I never asked for your support or like. Face your lane.

well you are right.people move around with their likes.Maybe that's what you really are.Continue down that narrow moral path.I won't stop you bro