Title: Cocaine Hoppers
Author: Jude Roys Oboh
Publisher: Lexington Books,London
Year: 2021
Pagination: 359
REVIEWER: Denja Abdullahi
The book Cocaine Hoppers by Jude Roys Oboh can be summarily described as a most authoritative work in recent times that clinically x-rays the Nigerian international Cocaine Trafficking business with a combination of a scholarly emperical approach alongside an embedded street-wise reportorial style. Before now, or before encountering the book, the much many of us know about the menace of cocaine and other kinds of drug trafficking is the unceasing news of arrests of Nigerian drug couriers at airports at home and abroad by anti-drug law enforcement agencies; the sentencing and execution of drug traffickers at home and abroad by the criminal justice systems of countries and the successful raids by anti-drug law enforcement agents on drug laden warehouses or marijuana farms and the arrests of some minions and barons. We are living witnesses to the menace of drug abuse in our society as it affects the youthful population and fuels all kinds of associated crimes. Surrounding all these peripheral knowledge of the phenomena of drug trafficking in our society, is the unverified and yet unproven generalized perception of the involvement of the high and mighty of our society in drug trafficking, which the author referred to as the “myth of elite involvement” (25).
What the author has done in Cocaine Hoppers is to transform two decades of field research in Nigeria and across all renowned centers where Nigerians are involved in the illicit drug trade , distilled that into the requirements of an academic inquiry , to give us an insightful book that lay bare the intricacies, modus operandi, the practitioners, the sociology, the politics and the economics of the Nigerian international cocaine trafficking industry. The book as stated by the author, broadly seeks to provide answers to the following questions: What is the role of Nigeria and Nigerians in the international cocaine trade? What are the mechanisms behind the success of Nigerians in the global cocaine trade? What is the involvement of Nigerians in its primary cocaine export country (Brazil) and in destination countries globally, including the United States, United Kingdom, Indonesia, and China and how can this involvement be explained ? (6).
Copious answers were provided in the book to the above research questions and many more derived from the author’s interviews of over 250 persons involved directly at the various points of the illicit drug trade, observations of persons involved in the trade at the environment where they transact their businesses and the scouring of secondary data, institutional reports, media publications and academic theories in the fields of criminology, sociology and economics that seeks to explain the motivation behind crimes (274).
Cocaine Hoppers is divided into nine chapters which is prefaced with an introduction in which the authors stressed the methodology he adopted which is very strong in the generation of primary data by interviewing directly the people involved in the illicit drug trade and observing “participants in the criminogenic environment ” (7). The emphasis on the methodology behind the research into the intricacies of the illicit drug trade in the introduction is germane for the validation and believability of the findings and conclusions at the end. The Nigerian International Cocaine trafficking industry is a world in which only the punitive anti-drug law enforcement agencies are supposed to go close to either as interceptors or undercover agents but in Cocaine Hoppers, we encounter a researcher gaining the confidence of traffickers, drug users, couriers, barons, incarcerated persons and everyone in the line of that business to conduct extensive interviews and sometimes peripherally observe them at work. The methodology reveals a daring-do on the part of the researcher and the possibility of an objective appraisal of the underbelly of the drug trafficking world with a view to humanely ameliorating its adverse effects on the society.
Chapter one of Cocaine Hoppers dwells on “the emergence of cocaine in Nigeria,” tracing the primal source of the illicit trade in drugs such as “cannabis, cocaine, opiates ,amphetamine-type stimulants and new psychoactive substances”(17) to the precolonial period of slavery and later colonialism of Africa by world powers. This chapter also foregrounds the emergence of Nigeria as a “transit-transaction country” and highlights the successes and innate contradictions in the Nigeria’s war on drugs by primarily the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the misalignment between the war on drugs and the criminal justice system. This chapter contains a novel or rather controversial postulation which is further pursued in the book on the need to decriminalize and regulate some hard drugs like cannabis and redirects the war on drugs to a rehabilitative and regulatory approach which is fast becoming the imminent reality globally.
In Chapter Two which deals with ‘’“ State Crisis” ‘ and Fostering Cocaine Culture”, the author explains how the failure of the state signposted by endemic poverty, limited educational opportunities, pervasive unemployment and underemployment, loose border control, reverse social capital, lack of economic diversification, social injustice and inequality, failure of the criminal justice system, widespread elite corruption and sundry ills are causative factors to the involvement in the illicit drug trade by Nigerians. This submission is hinged on the many sociological and criminologist theories on the conditions that breed crimes of which drug trafficking is just one.
Chapter Three wades into the “Cultural Factors Motivating Nigerian Cocaine Trafficking.” Here the author unearths how the informal economy and the associated apprenticeship system with the state-induced adverse policies that affect that economy and the psycho-social failings of the system itself become motivating factors for involvement in drug trafficking by many persons. The patrilineal culture of inheritance in some societies in which some people are unjustly disinherited and the overarching pressure from the extended family system are presented as precursors or push factors to the involvement in the illicit drug trade by many persons , which is often perceived as a gateway to stupendous wealth. A kind of end-note to that chapter is a brief expose on how the “foo-foo swallowing culture’’ provides a Nigerian imprimatur in the global drug trade of ingesting cocaine pellets called “suicide balls” by traffickers before air travel which are later excreted at their various destinations.
Chapter Four entitled “ The Structure and Modus Operandi of Nigerian Cocaine Traffickers’’ quarries deep into the network and ecosystem of the Nigerian International Cocaine Trafficking Industry by providing answers to questions such as : “who are the actors, the Nigerian cocaine traffickers, and smugglers? What is the basis of their trade networks? What kinds of traffickers are they? What are their social backgrounds?What are the connections between them? What can we say about their culture? “(107), etc. The author later identifies and classifies the major actors in the Nigerian cocaine trafficking business as made up of six loose groupings of “(1)Oga(“big man”) large scale smugglers,(2)small-scale traffickers or entrepreneurs, (3) strikers,(4) “suicide birds” or couriers ,(5) part-time couriers or “freelance”traffickers, and (6)retailers “ (275). This criminogenic ecosystem in the drug trade he posits is unique to Nigeria and it cuts across ethnic and religious groups. The author further on in this chapter describes the peculiar amorphous or formless relationship among the identified actors within the Nigerian drug trafficking ecosystem as against the highly organized ,hierarchical and mafia-like structure of drug traffickers in Latin America, United State and Europe. This chapter also contains descriptions of some traditional spiritual supports for the drug trade, how traffickers evade detection in spite of increased vigilance at entry and exit points through which drugs are trafficked and the resilience of Nigerian traffickers in virtually all drug hubs in the world.
In the aforementioned chapter above and in the succeeding fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of Cocaine Hoppers , the extensive fieldwork conducted by the author in the course of researching the subject matter, brought up a wealth of information that laid bare the modes of operations and the peculiarities of Nigerian traffickers’ involvement in the drug trade in Brazil, China, South East Asian countries of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia; United State of America, United Kingdom and Netherlands. By visiting these countries to observe the nitty-gritty of the participation of Nigerians in the illicit drug trade and by interviewing Nigerian incarcerated in various prisons in the aforementioned countries and interacting with law enforcement agencies of those countries, the author was able to deduce the followings backed with facts and statistics:
That the war on drug trafficking world-wide ,no matter how repressive it is with attendant large scale arrests, incarceration and execution of traffickers, has not been able to significantly curb the menace.
That the criminal justice system against drug trafficking in most countries is conflicted, heavily biased against foreigners, the poor , or certain races and innately corrupt thereby making the global anti-drug war ineffective.
That the repressive tendency of the anti-drug war only leads to the burgeoning population of prisons world wide, which in turn take a high toll in economic cost on the societies and countries that must maintain the prison industrial complexes and the lives of those already incarcerated.
That the illicit drug trade world wide, in spite of all the state-controlled repressive laws and measures ,has remained resilient and therefore need a reassessment of approaches against drug trafficking and drug use by refocusing on preventive measures that involve rehabilitation, decriminalization, regulation and tackling the factors that nurtures and predisposes the people into engaging in the drug trade.
Chapter Eight entitled “ Controlling International Cocaine Hoppers in Nigeria, Brazil ,China, and Indonesia” advances the arguments for finding alternative means of controlling drug trafficking beyond the much touted “war on drugs” and “fight against drug trafficking” by showcasing how cocaine hopping “persist in spite of the threat of harsh prison sentences, capital punishment and police cultures defined by corruption and extortion in Brazil,China and Indonesia (243). This chapter wades into the rather perceptively controversial recommendation of legalizing,decriminalization,normalization and regulating some drugs like Marijuana and even cocaine by putting them in the same basket of regulation and non-prohibition as Tobacco and Alcohol. The author provides examples of countries such as Uruguay, Canada and Netherlands in which a rather different approach to curbing the menace of drug abuse or trafficking in the society has to do with legalizing and normalizing recreational drugs. The author posits that this has led to the decline in the profitability of drug trafficking in those societies, reduced stigmatization and even led to a country like Netherlands having “the lowest incarceration rates in Europe” (269). To foreground the arguments for decriminalization and normalization of drugs in the society, the author paraphrasing Nadelmann(1991) posits:
Calls are growing for the decriminalization and normalization of drugs.
As frustrations with the drug problem and current drug policies rise,
growing number of political leaders,law enforcement officials,drug abuse
experts,and common citizens are insisting that a radical alternative to current
policies be fairly considered: the controlled legalization and decriminalization
of drugs(269).
And further in this chapter,the author states:
This work underscores a movement within drug prohibition that
shifts drug policies from the criminalized and punitive end to the more
decriminalized and openly regulated end of the drug policy continuum
– moving drug policies away from severe punishment,capital punishment
,coercion, and repression and towards tolerance,regulation, and public Health(271).
As if taking a cue from this call , recently in the Nigerian National Assembly ,particularly in the House of Representative, a bill was moved by a two honourable members that seeks to decriminalize the use of Marijuana and rather propose its regulation because of its health and economic benefits. As expected,the bill could not pass the debates in the house as arguments against its passage for second reading came up by opposing members who trenchantly maintained that legalizing the use of marijuana and decriminalizing it will worsen the adverse effects of drug abuse already pervasive in the society. This arguments were made with the backdrop of the widespread destruction that drug abuse of all kinds( rampant usage of tramadol, codeine syrup,mpumiri, etc)is causing on the youthful populations in the society. The speaker of the House’s deft intervention of prolonging debate on the bill by pointing out that marijuana is already widely used in the society and that it may not be a bad idea to push for its regulation rather than maintaining the head-in-the sand approach of sustaining its criminalization, could not save the bill. The bill was stepped down by its sponsors for reintroduction at a later time, after more work would have been done and in a more conducive national atmosphere. This extension of this review to the atmospheric reality of the proposition of decriminalization and legalization of drugs and substances in the society does not in any way invalidate the call for other humane, objective, scientific and result-focused ways in ameliorating the causes and effects of drug trafficking in Nigeria and globally that have been proposed in the book. A reader only needs to read the book to discover the possibilities of extending the best practices employed by the Nigerian community in Guangzhou area of China in collaboration with local authorities to drastically reduce the participation of deviant Nigerians in the drug trade(220). This identified strategy and others are projected in the book as containing workable pathways to creating a “more law-abiding society in in a more effective and less costly way than the traditional detect/convict/punish approach.”
The final chapter of Cocaine Hoppers entitled “Findings and Conclusion’’ reiterates in emphasis some of the major findings drawn from the empirical observations and the distillation of the primary and secondary data the author gathered in the course of the field works and academic research. Many of the findings have been summarized earlier on in this review and therefore needs no repetition here. However, we will restate here what can be summed up as the major recommendation and conclusion put forward by the author, after an expansive and in-depth analysis of drug trafficking as practiced by Nigerian globally:
Legalization and regulation of drugs will open a world of opportunities.
By making the illicit legitimate,cocaine hoppers,Jamaican Yardie,Italian
Ndrangheta,Mexican and Colombian drug cartels and their associated
criminal authorities will go bankrupt as retail prices of illicit drug drops…
Future policy changes should consider that legalization combined with
taxation and regulation is more effective than decriminalization,meaning
repealing criminal penalties against possession but retaining them
against trafficking. ….In all ,legalization and regularization are vital
steps in the right direction for drug policy reform, and national governments
should liberate themselves from the constraints of old-fashioned and punitive framework(280-281).
The book Cocaine Hoppers in all its 359 pages bristle with load of facts mined from extensive data generated from the field work juxtaposed with theories that have been developed beforehand that describe directly or tangentially the subject matter. A reading of the book by an expert in the field or the general reader cannot but leave the reader with overwhelming information that clinically dissects and positions for review and understanding the nature of Nigerian International Cocaine trafficking and the attendant consequences to the traffickers , the government and the people of the country. The book in the style of its narration, chapterization and the use of succinct sub-headings make it a delightful and easy read to the average reader. A glimpse of its 52 page bibliography, many of which were cited profusely within the book ,could have made for a tortuous intrusive reading ,common with academic treatise but the citations within the text has been deftly handled by the author to allow for a better grasp of the information conveyed in the book. It is a highly readable book that is informative and educative and presented in a panoramic manner that one begins to picture a very authoritative documentary or feature film being made out of it. And most importantly, the book provides policy makers and executors the evident raw materials and concepts with which to devise other innovative,creative and productive ways to tackle the menace of Nigerian International Cocaine Trafficking. Though repetitive in some areas because of the juggling of facts and concepts to explain similar occurrences in the drug trade in different places and contexts , I wholeheartedly recommend Cocaine Hoppers to all and sundry interested in unraveling the dark world of Nigerian International Cocaine Trafficking as a subject of study or for the mere seeking of enlightenment.
This review was presented on April 6, 2023, during the public presentation of the book at Merit House, Abuja.