Drug Bust at Lagos Shows West Africa's New Role in Cocaine Trade

 

Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has seized one tonne of cocaine from a shipping container, one of the nation's biggest busts yet and the largest ever reported at Lagos' Tin Can Port.

The drugs were detected while disinfecting empties that were imported to Nigeria for the purpose of re-export use. The customs area controller for the terminal, Joe Anani, told The Guardian Nigeria that it was the first shipment of "hard" drugs ever seized in his unit's history. 

At current European market pricing, the 1,000-kilo haul would be worth about $15 million wholesale; Nigerian authorities valued the shipment at $235 million.

Lagos is one of several regional ports that play a role in the Brazil-West Africa-Europe route for cocaine trafficking. As enforcement at Europe's biggest seaports gets stricter, and losses to port security rise, drug smuggling groups are becoming more inventive in their logistics arrangements. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, notorious Balkan (Bosnian, Serbian, Albanian and Montenegrin) criminal networks have set up a home for their cocaine trafficking activities in West African nations. 

"Four key factors make West Africa an increasingly attractive hub for cocaine trafficking: geography, gaps in governance, weak law enforcement collaboration . . . and ever-stronger transport infrastructure," wrote a group of researchers for the Global Initiative.

Using both small vessels and containerized trade, Balkan criminals move kilos across the Atlantic from their transshipment hubs in Brazil to smaller nations - Senegal, The Gambia, Liberia, Ghana - where the drugs are inserted into "legitimate" export container traffic bound for Europe. Since these boxes depart from the Gulf of Guinea, not previously well-known for trafficking, they have attracted less law enforcement scrutiny on the receiving end in Northern Europe. The newly announced Nigerian seizure would be consistent with a drug shipment departing West Africa for a high-value market.