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The Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. Gen. Mohamed Marwa (retd), has declared that the global war against drug trafficking will not be won through arrests alone, insisting that criminals must also be stripped of the wealth that sustains their operations.
Marwa made the declaration in a presentation titled “Criminal Property and the Criminal Process: How Can We Make It More Effective?” delivered at the 43rd Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, hosted by the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
The gathering drew judges, law enforcement chiefs, financial intelligence experts and academics from around the world.
He argued that convictions alone are an incomplete measure of success, stressing that a trafficker who loses his freedom but keeps his fortune has not truly been beaten, since that wealth can bankroll fresh operations.
Speaking before a session chaired by Honourable Judge Wendy Tien, he likened arresting a trafficker without seizing his assets to cutting a weed at the stem while its roots remain intact — wealth that resurfaces elsewhere, under new names and fronts.
Marwa detailed six strategies the NDLEA has adopted to strengthen asset recovery, built on the NDLEA Act 2004, the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery and Management) Act 2022, and the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022.
Among the cases he cited was the forfeiture of Hook Hotel, a property tied to a fugitive drug suspect, recovered through non-conviction-based forfeiture and sold for $4.2 million, with proceeds remitted to the Federal Government’s forfeited assets account at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
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He also disclosed that investigators and prosecutors are now embedded together from the start of cases, a reform that has sped up the process of securing restraint orders, noting that just last month, the agency froze bank accounts worth over $7 million and secured interim forfeiture orders on multibillion-naira assets, including filling stations, buildings and vehicles linked to a methamphetamine syndicate.
On the high-profile case of Nigerian billionaire and suspected drug baron Amadi Simon — arrested in Switzerland in a joint operation involving the NDLEA, the U.S. DEA, and authorities in Switzerland, Greece and France — Marwa said three hotels linked to the suspect were placed under professional asset managers rather than shut down, to preserve their commercial value pending trial.
He pointed to the use of unexplained-wealth provisions as a key investigative tool, and to the interlocutory sale of perishable assets to prevent value loss before judgment.
These measures, he said, are now embedded in Nigeria’s National Drug Control Master Plan 2026–2030.
Summing up his approach in three principles — speed over sequence, preservation of value, and institutionalisation — Marwa acknowledged persistent challenges, including delays in mutual legal assistance and limited forensic accounting capacity.
He called for faster international cooperation and wider recognition of non-conviction-based forfeiture across jurisdictions, and thanked the organisers for the platform to share Nigeria’s experience.
