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From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has dismantled another industrial-scale clandestine methamphetamine laboratory, this time in a forest in Tapa Village, Ibarapa North Local Government Area, Oyo State, arresting a Mexican drug expert and four Nigerian collaborators.
The Agency said the facility, raided on June 17, was run by a Nigerian-Mexican cartel and came barely four weeks after operatives destroyed a similar laboratory in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State , a pattern the NDLEA says points to a deliberate push by drug barons to turn the Southwest into a synthetic drug manufacturing hub.
Briefing journalists at the Agency’s Abuja headquarters yesterday, NDLEA Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Marwa (Rtd), represented by Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, said the lab was no makeshift operation but a “sophisticated, highly organized transnational syndicate.”
Five suspects were arrested at the scene: Jose Villa Ochoa, 56, a Mexican methamphetamine expert said to have been brought in for his technical expertise in large-scale synthesis, and four Nigerians providing logistics and cover — Maxwell Uche Nevoh, 30; Olatunji Yusuf, 37; Bankole Akeem Owolabi, 45; and Ganiu Monsiu, 43.
Marwa said the arrest of a foreign cartel specialist on Nigerian soil underscored both the transnational reach of the threat and the Agency’s intelligence capability in tracking and neutralising such networks.
A forensic team from the Agency’s Directorate of Forensic and Chemical Monitoring moved into the facility on June 18 and found a full-scale production line, including:
Phenyl-2-propanone (P2P), the principal controlled precursor for methamphetamine synthesis
1,800 litres of phenylacetic acid, used to synthesise P2P
300 litres of a whitish crystalline substance in two drums
Four drums of dark liquid still undergoing synthesis
101 bags of caustic soda, 17 containers of sulphuric acid, 19.5 containers of tartaric acid, five containers of Reniso Ultracool 68, 25 bottles of 80% thioglycolic acid, two containers of ethyl phenylacetate, and 25 cartons of aluminium foil.
Equipment recovered included a reactor pot, two distillation units, three mixers and condensers, and two vegetable dehydrators used to dry the crystals rapidly.
Field tests on the recovered crystals returned positive for methamphetamine, while the crystalline substance in the drums tested positive for phenylacetic acid.
The NDLEA said all exhibits had been evacuated, documented and preserved for use in court.
Marwa warned drug cartels that Nigeria would not be a safe haven for the trade.
“We will find you in the cities, we will track you into the forests, and we will dismantle your infrastructure of death,” he said, adding that traffickers who believed dense forests would shield them from the law “were wrong.”
He commended the NDLEA’s Oyo State Command for the operation and thanked the public for credible information that aided the raid.
