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Former
President Olusegun Obasanjo now heads the West African Commission on Drugs (Image source: wacommissionondrugs.org)
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By
David Lewis (Reuters)
When
customs officers in the sleepy Senegalese town of Koumpentoum discovered a
stash of pills hidden in a bus from Mali in late February, they initially
thought it was counterfeit medicine.
They
stored the haul, poorly concealed in blue plastic bags and a yellow jerry can,
in the back of the customs office. Its owner escaped, slipping away into the
sprawl of shacks and hawkers.
Days
later, according to two officials involved in the seizure, a top officer from
regional headquarters took a closer look at the trove and identified it as the
drug methamphetamine. The 81 kg (179 pounds) stash was worth an estimated US$12
million or more based on the street price for the drug in Tokyo, where much of
it ends up.
The
seizure was one of three in Senegal so far this year. It highlights the new and
fast-growing role West Africa is playing in the global drug trade, not just as
a transit point for drugs but also as a producer of amphetamine-type stimulants
(ATS).
Smugglers
of Moroccan hashish have long crossed West Africa on their way to Europe or
Asia. Over the past decade, the region has also become a major transit point
for Latin American cocaine headed to Europe. But local and international
officials say West African criminal groups are now producing and exporting
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of methamphetamine – or meth – every
year, most of it shipped to Asia.
Climate
dictates where cocaine, heroin or hashish are produced, but there are no such
constraints on meth. The synthetic drug is derived from ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine, two medicines that are used to treat ailments from nasal
decongestion to asthma. As anyone who has seen the television series “Breaking
Bad” knows, meth can be manufactured even with basic equipment and a simple understanding
of chemistry. The potential profits are huge: One kilo of meth costs around
US$1,500 to make in West Africa but sells for around US$150,000 in Japan.
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Senegalese
police prepare to incinerate methamphetamines seized at the Malian border in
Tambacounda, Senegal, June 29, 2014. Reuters/Pape Demba Sidibe
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The
powerful stimulant is smoked, swallowed, snorted or injected by hundreds of
thousands of users there, in the United States and elsewhere. The United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says meth is increasingly popular in
East and Southeast Asia. Meth gives users an intense rush, heightens attention
and curbs appetite. It is highly addictive. Over time, addicts usually suffer
anxiety, weight loss and tooth decay.
One
reason West Africa is a good production zone, according to law enforcement
officials, is the region’s weak controls on imports of meth ingredients.
Imported legally for use in products such as cold medicine, they can easily be
diverted and transformed into meth by boiling, filtering and then combining
them with other chemicals.
Pierre
Lapaque, head of UNODC in West and Central Africa, puts production of the drug
in West Africa at around 1.5 tonnes per year. That’s small by world standards –
just a little over one percent of the 107 tonnes that was seized around the
globe in 2012. But it is up from zero in the region just five years
ago.
“It
is pretty alarming,” Lapaque said.
Nigerian
authorities have discovered 10 labs since 2010. Former President Olusegun
Obasanjo told Reuters that political leaders needed to wake up to the fact the
region had become a producer.
Obasanjo
now heads the West African Commission on Drugs and said the production of meth
in the region was raising the threat of drug-fueled instability. “It is now
affecting our politics because money earned from drugs is going into politics,”
he said. “You have drug barons who are now sponsoring politicians, or who (are)
in fact going into politics themselves.”
Rusty
Payne, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said one sign
of the growing importance of West Africa was the arrival of Latin American
producers, including Mexicans. Mexican drug gangs play a central role in the
meth industry in North America. Payne said Mexicans have helped set up
clandestine labs – known as “clan labs” – in Nigeria.
“They
are not just mom and pop labs, they are big labs,” Payne said. “Mexicans aren’t
going to come over and train (people) unless they are dealing in large
amounts.”
NOT READY FOR METH
Africa’s
place in the synthetic drug market was, until recent years, limited to South
Africa, which has a domestic market and feeds the global supply chain.
The
surge in production elsewhere on the continent is part of a broader boom in the
global amphetamine-type market. UNODC says annual methamphetamine seizures more
than doubled between 2010 and 2012.
The
first sign that synthetic drugs were being produced in West Africa came in 2009
when chemicals including MDP-2-P, used to make ecstasy, were found at a lab
raided in Guinea. UNODC estimates some US$100 million of ecstasy could have
been produced from the precursors found there.
The
same year, a Nigerian expelled from China was arrested with a manual on how to
cook meth, said Ahmadu Giade, head of Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency.
“Nigeria
at that time wasn’t prepared for that type of drug because we knew nothing
about it,” said Giade. He sent a team to South Africa to investigate how police
there handled meth labs.
In
2010, Nigerian agents stumbled across a meth lab in a place called Monkey
Village. Sunday Drambi Ziramgey, commander of a National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency team, was one of the first on the scene. He described a bungalow where
each of the four rooms housed a different stage of the cooking process. In the
kitchen, they found cooking pots, burners and compressing machines. A web of
light bulbs had been strung up to dry the meth.
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A
clandestine methamphetamine laboratory is seen inside a compound at Monkey
Village in Lagos, Nigeria, in this undated photograph taken from a National Drug
Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) PowerPoint presentation provided to Reuters,
July 9, 2015. Reuters/NDLEA/Handout via
Reuters
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A
2010 U.S. investigation into cocaine smuggling in Liberia also uncovered plans
to produce meth in the country for shipment to the United States and Japan. A
2011 report by Nigerian law enforcement officials, seen by Reuters, details a
step-by-step guide for meth production and distribution which was taken from a
Nigerian deported from China. The guide included contacts in Ghana, Iran,
Thailand and China who would help find couriers and buyers for
meth.
A
senior DEA official listed Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana and
Guinea-Bissau as possible locations for meth labs.
Mame
Seydou Ndour, Senegal’s anti-drug tsar, said making meth across the region had
multiple advantages. “The transport cost is reduced. There is less risk in
Africa. Labor is cheaper here too – with poverty there are plenty of people who
are ready to get involved,” he said.
THE NIGERIAN CONNECTION
As
with many other industries, Nigeria dominates meth production in West Africa.
It’s home to Africa’s biggest population and some of the region’s most
established criminal gangs, according to drugs experts.
Those
gangs have connections with experienced Latin American “cooks,” such as three
Bolivians detained in one lab raid. But Nigerian gangs can now run the trade
themselves, and have established global networks to distribute the finished
product.
The
DEA official said there had been several reported instances in Nigeria this
year of 25 to 50 kg of ephedrine being diverted from registered pharmaceutical
companies. “This, on top of the smuggled precursors, readily supplies meth
production,” the official said.
Giade,
Nigeria’s top anti-drug cop, said most of the precursors used in Nigerian meth
production came from India. Some of the chemicals are approved for import by
Nigeria’s national food and drug regulator, he said, while others are smuggled
in illegally, “because we have porous borders.” Giade cited the border to the
west with Benin as a major weak point.
In
2014 the Nigerian government told the International Narcotics Control Board
(INCB)it needed 9.65 tonnes of ephedrine for legitimate businesses. India alone
supplied Nigeria with 9.2 tonnes last year, according to a Reuters analysis of
official ephedrine exports listed on Indian trade website www.zauba.com, which
collates data from ports and customs authorities. It is not clear how much
ephedrine Nigeria imported from other suppliers.
“India
is legally doing business, but African nations should be checking if the
amounts ordered are in line with what is needed by the different factories
using ephedrine,” said UNODC’s Lapaque.
NEW NETWORKS
West
African meth production is still far off the levels in Mexico, where officials
seized 19 tonnes last year and discovered a string of so-called super labs. But
local groups are beginning to make inroads into lucrative markets in Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan.
Law
enforcement officials say Nigerian criminal groups use extensive networks of
human mules. Several officials in West Africa said Nigerians have begun to
employ Europeans with clean passports, who are likely to raise less suspicion
in Asia. In December 2013, a German man and an Austrian woman were arrested in
Jakarta after they were caught having flown in from Dakar with meth hidden in
their luggage, local media reported.
Police
in London and Paris last year arrested eight Europeans who had left West Africa
and were headed to Asia, each carrying 2 to 6 kg of meth, one foreign law
enforcement official told Reuters.
In
an effort to stop the industry becoming entrenched, Payne said the DEA is
helping local officials by detecting and dismantling clandestine labs.
“They basically have a
three-headed monster now in Africa,” Payne said. “They have the coke problem
from South America, the heroin from Afghanistan, and the home-grown meth that
is making its way to South Africa and Asia. We’re trying to address it as we
can, but that is tough.”
This is a Reuters original investigation.
Video from wacommissionondrugs.org
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