Video - Opioid crisis in Nigeria

West Africa - and particularly its most populous nation, Nigeria - is battling an opioid abuse crisis. Medicines such as tramadol, legally and legitimately prescribed by doctors for pain relief, are also being taken in life-threatening doses by millions in search of a fix or a release from poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity. People & Power sent filmmakers Naashon Zalk and Antony Loewenstein to Nigeria to investigate how the drug is smuggled, traded and abused, as well as the widespread corruption that follows this illicit trafficking, and the appalling health consequences for those in its grip.

Related story: Growing meth market in Nigeria

Growing meth market in Nigeria

Nigeria has emerged over the past decade as a significant producer of methamphetamine (meth), a highly addictive and illegal synthetic psychostimulant drug. Since the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency’s (NDLEA) first discovery in Lagos in 2011 of a clandestine meth laboratory, 17 more have been dismantled elsewhere in the country. The quantity of meth seized has skyrocketed, rising from 177kg in 2012 to 1.3 tons in 2017.

In late 2018, following the dismantling of a lab in Obinugwu village in south-east Nigeria, NDLEA Special Enforcement Team commander Sunday Zirangey reportedly said that meth was a serious threat and that Nigeria risked turning into a narco state.

Despite the acute health risks associated with its consumption – such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular-related illness – a growing number of young people in Nigeria reportedly take the drug. A 2018 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report estimated that 89 000 Nigerians were using meth. Abimbola Adebakin, a leading Lagos-based pharmacist, told Enact that “the youth may be using drugs increasingly to cope with a depressed economic reality for them”.

“Furthermore, due to our weak pharmaceutical drug distribution system, the youth have a porous drug supply situation that lends itself to support such abuse and misuse, she said.

In 2016, the illicit market for meth took a new turn in Nigeria. Drug syndicates brought Latin American drug experts to Nigeria to help them set up large-scale meth labs, with similar characteristics to those found in Mexico. One industrial super lab was said to have the capacity to produce 4,000 kg of meth per week.

When the NDLEA raided the site in March 2016, they arrested four Mexicans and five Nigerians. The Mexicans were reportedly from Sinaloa State. Their arrest provided further evidence of a formal and successful alliance between Nigerian and Latin American cartels.

The growth of the illicit meth market in Nigeria has also been fuelled by the accessibility of precursor chemicals such as ephedrine, which is theoretically a controlled substance but is widely available in Nigeria.

In March 2019, the NDLEA seized 309 kg of ephedrine from members of a criminal network in Trans Ekulu Estate in Enugu and Festac Town in Lagos. According to a 2017 report by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Nigerian criminal networks bring ephedrine in from countries in West Africa that import more than they need.

According to the UNODC’s Cheikh Touré, the “use and diversion of pre-precursors and other non-controlled chemicals signifies complex challenges in addressing clandestine meth manufacturing in Nigeria and West Africa”. Touré is the UNODC programme co-ordinator for the Economic Community of West African States Regional Action Plan to address the growing problem of illicit drug trafficking, organised crime and drug abuse in West Africa.

While a portion of the meth produced in Nigeria is consumed locally, most is reportedly exported to South Africa where 1kg of meth sells for up to €10 000 (R163,000). It is also trafficked to South-East Asia, in particular Japan, where 1kg can reportedly fetch €130,000.

As in Mexico where syndicates use violence to control the drug market, confrontations between drug gangs in Nigeria have increased. In August 2017, gunmen attacked a church in Ozubulu in Anambra State while looking for a rival drug gang leader, killing 13 people. An investigation revealed that the fighting was between two gangs operating from South Africa.

According to Touré: “Nigeria has built up expertise in relation to the detection and dismantling of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories.” He said stricter control by the national authorities on precursor chemicals and other psychotropic substances was being implemented.

However, despite the great efforts the Nigerian authorities are making to contain illicit meth production, the illicit market of the drug is yet to be eradicated. The government should focus on effective regulation of the import of controlled precursors.

By Mouhamadou Kane

Daily Maverick

Fear of Nigeria becoming a Narco State

In the early hours of a humid November morning, a 16-car convoy rolled into Obinugwu village in southeast Nigeria and stopped outside the iron gates of a non-descript house.

More than 50 drug enforcement officials crept through the compound and surrounded the methamphetamine lab hidden by overgrown jungle behind the property.

The bust happened just before daybreak. Dozens were arrested, including the suspected kingpin at his mansion in the nearby city of Owerri.

“It took one year of surveillance,” a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) officer, who was involved in the raid, told AFP. “They were all sleeping. We took them by surprise.” Inside the lab there was 78 kilograms (171 pounds) of meth — a drug as notorious for its exhilarating highs as its life-destroying, addictive lows.

But the haul, worth tens of thousands of dollars, was not for domestic consumption. Instead, it was probably destined for South Africa and Asia, investigators said.

Drug trafficking is nothing new to Nigeria, which has long been a transit point for cocaine and heroin going to Europe and North America. The difference is that now Nigerians are producing the drugs.

With vast quantities of chemicals entering the country, porous borders and corrupt law enforcement, Nigeria is an ideal place to produce the drug.

Since the country’s first meth lab was discovered in 2011, authorities have found 14 more producing mass quantities of the stimulant, while seizures of the drug have jumped from 177 kilos in 2012 to 1,363 kilos in 2016.

“It (meth production) is on the increase, significantly on the increase. Meth today is a serious threat to Nigeria,” said Sunday Zirangey, NDLEA Special Enforcement Team commander.

“If this continues, Nigeria may turn into a narco-state.” Glen Prichard, Nigeria project coordinator with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, agreed. “Nigeria is potentially following the same footsteps as Mexico that led to instability, organised crime and an infiltrated government,” he added.

Church massacre 

Reliable data on meth production in Nigeria is hard to come by and seizures are small compared with global giants Mexico and Myanmar.

But evidence on the ground points to a much larger industry. Nigeria‘s estimated need for the stimulant ephedrine, which is used as a medical decongestant, is 771 kilos, according to a US State Department report on international narcotics.

Yet Nigeria imports over eight tons a year, with the difference suspected of either being used to produce meth or trafficked elsewhere. Despite the risks of arrest and even execution for traffickers in Asia, the profits are irresistible in a country where the minimum wage is just 18,000 naira ($50, 44 euros) a month.

A kilo of meth sells for $3,500 on the streets of Lagos but by the time it reaches South Africa it is worth $12,000 and $150,000 in Japan — and the stakes are rising. Last year, the fight for control of the lucrative South African market more than 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) away came to St Philip’s Parish in Ozubulu, a village in the southeast Nigerian state of Anambra. Thirteen people were shot dead in an apparent reprisal attack between Nigerian drug barons operating in Johannesburg.

Piles of trash line the dirt road leading to Ozubulu, where an endless stream of people hawk everything from adulterated fuel to plastic flip-flops. But among the grinding poverty are huge villas with grand columns and intricate wrought iron gates — glaring anomalies in a region with epileptic power and disintegrating roads. In August last year, unknown gunmen interrupted the 6:00 am Sunday mass in Ozubulu, hoping to kill Aloysius Nnamdi Ikegwuonu, a Johannesburg drugs kingpin known as “The Bishop”.

He wasn’t there but his father and a one-year-old child were among the victims. Details of the shooting remain clouded in secrecy. “What we had is gunshots, sporadic and reckless shootings. That’s what I can say,” said parish priest Father Jude Onwuaso standing by the victims’ marble graves wearing a sky-blue cassock. Ozubulu has made headlines for drugs before. In 2015, the NDLEA busted a meth lab belonging to Ikejiaku Sylvester Chukwunwendu, also known as “Blessed Benita”. He was charged with meth production and trafficking in the village. “He’s one of the biggest kingpins we’ve got,” said state prosecutor Lambert Nor, who said some of Chukwunwendu’s couriers had been executed in China for drug trafficking.

Ideal conditions

As the popular US television series “Breaking Bad” showed, meth can be made by almost everyone in their own kitchen if they have the right ingredients and background knowledge in chemistry. Cocaine and heroin, on the other hand, are bigger-ticket enterprises. They require land dedicated to plantations and a specific climate to grow the crop. But Nigerians were paying thousands of dollars a week to Mexicans, Colombians and Bolivians to teach them a new form of production that pumps out bigger, purer batches of meth.

Two years ago, Nigerian authorities arrested four Mexicans from Sinaloa, the epicentre of one of the world’s biggest drug trafficking cartels and birthplace of the infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. “When you found labs before you always had Mexicans and Bolivians behind it but now the Nigerians are on their own and they do even better,” said Kayode Raji, NDLEA assistant commander in Imo State.

Experts fear that as production increases, meth will find a domestic market like in South Africa, where “tik” — as it’s known on the street — has been described as an “epidemic” and is the most abused drug in the Western Cape province. But there is no easy way to stop the rise of meth in Nigeria. “It will become uncontrollable unless decisive measures are taken,” said Nor, warning: “Otherwise what we have in Mexico will be a small thing compared to Nigeria.”

Vanguard

Tramadol fueling death, despair, and Boko Haram in Nigeria

After a BBC investigation in April showed the extent of codeine addiction in Nigeria, the production of codeine-based cough syrup was banned in Nigeria.

But codeine is not the only opioid scourge spreading across West Africa. Another painkiller, Tramadol, is fuelling widespread addiction - and as the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty found out, it may even be fuelling insurgency in the north-east.

When Mustafa Kolo, 23, takes the bright red pills he feels like he can push a tree. It's like his body isn't his. They obliterate the negative thoughts.

"When I take it, I forget everything," he says.

It's 10:00, Mr Kolo and his friend Modu Mohamed are with their boss, the commander of a vigilante unit set up to protect the city of Maiduguri from Boko Haram.

The young recruits are clearly uncomfortable.

'People have lost everything'

"How many did you take today?" I asked them.

"Today? None," came the reply.

Mr Kolo's eyes are dark and bloody red, he slurs slightly as he talks. Mr Mohamed is listless and distracted. His head is hanging between his bony shoulders.

It's obvious they're lying. The commander steps in and urges them to tell the truth.

"I used to take three to four when I first began taking it. But now I have reduced it to one or half," Mr Kolo says, unwilling to go further.

In this troubled town, thousands of people are addicted to Tramadol - the vigilante fighters, those displaced by the war and even the militants themselves.

The cheap opioid painkiller is meant to be used to treat moderate to acute pain. But, like most opioids, it is addictive - although just how addictive is a matter for debate.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says Tramadol is generally thought to have a "low potential for dependence relative to morphine".

But the epidemic of addiction erupting across West Africa could yet disprove that.

"The problem is really huge," says Marcus Ayuba, head of Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in Borno state, bowing his head sadly.

"It's really huge."

Mr Ayuba runs a drug treatment centre in Maiduguri, the state capital where, by his own estimate, one in three young people are addicted to the drug - an epidemic which, he believes, can be traced back to a decade of war.

"People have lost everything," he says. "They are young people who were basically farmers, they've lost their farms, their homes."

"Parents have seen children killed in their presence," he adds.

Mr Ayuba says during counselling, people have told him, "What else can we do? We just want to get out of the world."

But the crisis didn't bring Tramadol to Nigeria. Mr Kolo started taking Tramadol in 2007, two years before the insurgency began.

At first, he says he took it to help him to work. It dulled the pain of physical labour while helping to keep him awake.

But now because of his addiction, he can't get work. Instead he volunteers with the civilian vigilante force.

"It really helps me in fighting Boko Haram," he says. "When I go into the bush, even the way I run, the way I walk, it's different. It gives me strength."

But the enemy too seems to have caught on to this trick.

An army of addicts

A former militant fighter is sitting in a soft, lilac coloured Hawaiian shirt.

The 21-year-old is in the custody of the Nigerian army after running away from Boko Haram in January.

For four years, he lived in a forest camp where there wasn't enough food or water - but there was Tramadol.

"When you are going for a military operation you will be given it to take, otherwise if you take it you will be killed," he says.

"They told us when you take it you will be less afraid - you will be strong and courageous."

The drug was once plentiful, but in the past few months, as the Nigerian army closed in on their camps, supplies became scarce.

Tramadol was reserved only for leaders and those going into battle. The former fighter believes they were all addicted.

The idea of an army of Islamist militants tanked up on opioids and sent out to kill is terrifying, and Mr Ayuba says believes it has contributed to the brutality of this conflict.

"Nobody has the natural will to take someone's life. Drugs are always there to give you the push," he says.

Then there are the women who have escaped from Boko Haram and now find themselves addicted to drugs.

One 16-year-old told him the militants would drug girls when they started crying.

"When she escaped she was looking for something to knock her out," he says.

Smuggled by gangs

At the choked port of Lagos, an officer from the NDLEA orders men to break open a container with a crow bar. Stacked from top to bottom are boxes of an over-the-counter painkiller, but hidden behind them are thousands of packets of Tramadol.

The brand is Super RolmeX. On the packet it says "Made in India, for export only". That is because the dosage - at 225mg - is more than twice what is legal in most countries.

It says it's manufactured for Sintex Technologies Ltd in London, England, but a quick search on the UK companies register online shows that company was dissolved in 2012.

There are six containers and millions of tablets in this shipment alone.

The UN say Tramadol is being smuggled into Africa from South Asia by international criminal gangs, with yearly seizures in sub-Saharan Africa rising from 300kg (661lb)per year to more than three tonnes since 2013, according to a report in December.

So with abuse clearly happening in places like Nigeria, it's hard to understand why Tramadol is scheduled two ranks below oxycontin, morphine or high dosages of codeine by the US.

"It could be that it's a weak opioid," says Dr Eric Stein, an expert in drug abuse.

"At the end of the day the ready availability of stronger opioids make it unnecessary [for those trying to get high]" he says.

"If you're looking to get drunk, do you drink a beer or do shots?"

Religion plays a role

So why is it so prevalent in Nigeria? Firstly it is cheap - in Nigeria it's about $0.05 for 200mg as opposed to about $2.50 in the US, and secondly its ability to help people work. Across Africa, many people rely still on manual labour to get paid.

Mr Ayuba believes religion may have a part to play as well. Alcohol is forbidden in the majority Muslim communities of north-east Nigeria, but there is less of a taboo around prescription drugs.

Despite anecdotal evidence, the WHO has so far resisted putting international controls on its trade.

There are fears limiting access to the drug would cut people off who really need it: it is one of the few painkillers widely available to treat pain for cancer patients.

It can also be brought in pretty easily to crisis and emergency situations, says Gilles Forte, secretary of the group responsible for reviewing Tramadol at the WHO.

"If it's scheduled it becomes difficult to move it from one country to another," he explains.

But as long as it is so freely available the addiction crisis will continue. As it is, Mr Ayuba can only manage a fraction of the cases he is presented with every day.

Though they would like to, the parents of Mustafa Kolo - the young vigilante - cannot afford to send him to the drug treatment centre.

"I used to dream about grandchildren from him. Now, I see that I have lost," says his father.

"All my country has lost, because of what he is doing."

BBC

Young Nigerians turning to drugs

A growing number of young Nigerians are addicted to drugs, officials and police say, turning to cheap narcotics like codeine, tramadol, and other chemical substances in search of a high.

The government this month have banned the production of codeine-based cough syrup and, in the wake of a recent BBC investigation, temporarily shuttered three pharmaceutical firms for allegedly failing to cooperate with federal inspectors. 

Now, drug-reform policy advocates, such as RISE Nigeria's Adeolu Ogunrombi, fear the problem will worsen and are pushing authorities to be more proactive about tackling corruption and closing loopholes they say still exist in the public health system. 

"There is still a huge demand, and a criminal market is going to spring up to meet the needs of the users who are in need of the substances", he said. "We don't even consider that someone who is dependent on drugs is still a human being." 

In this episode, The Stream explores the depth of Nigeria's opioid problem to learn how the government is working to prevent abuse and the distribution of drugs on the black market, and what needs to be done next.

Nigerian drug smuggler exretes 1410.9 grams of cocaine wraps

The High People’s Court of Guangdong Province, China, has finally confirmed a death sentence with two years probation on a Nigerian, Mr. Ikechukwu Peter Obiekezie, who was reportedly found guilty of smuggling 1410.9 grams of cocaine into China.

Details reaching Vanguard disclosed that Obiekezie, with Nigerian standard Passport No. A50296207, was on 2nd October, 2016, arrested at the Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, China, upon arrival from Addis Ababa aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight No. ET 606 on suspicion of smuggled drugs, which he swallowed and brought to China.

He has, since October 3, 2016, joined the growing list of Nigerians who are detained and serving various jail terms in Guangdong Province, China, after he excreted a total of 1410.9 grams of cocaine at the Chinese Aviation hospital. Having been in detention since then, Obiekezie was on August 18, 2017, issued a death sentence, following rejection of an appeal made at the Intermediate Peoples’ court of Guangzhou on April 7, 2017, after he was declared guilty of smuggling the hard drug into China and was given suspended death sentence. 

A follow up report from the Nigerian Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, disclosed that, the death sentence, in the case of Obiekezie, will not be carried out within the period of two years if the convict shows remorse, good behavior and if no new crime is intentionally committed during the two-year probationary period. The Consulate also said that the death sentence will be reduced to life or 10 to 15 years imprisonment if the convict remains of good behaviour. “Capital Punishment is a legal penalty in the People’s Republic of China. 

It is mostly enforced for murder and drug trafficking, and executions are carried out by lethal injection or shooting. “There is widespread public support for capital punishment, especially as a penalty for violent crimes. The People’s Republic of China executes the highest number of people annually. “It is worth noting that after a first trial conducted by an Intermediate People’s Court which concludes with a death sentence, a double appeals process must follow. 

“The first appeal is conducted by a High People’s Court if the condemned appeals to it, and since 2007, another appeal is conducted automatically (even if the condemned does not make the appeal) by the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China (SPC) in Beijing, to prevent the awkward circumstance in which the defendant is proven innocent after the death penalty, an obviously irrevocable punishment has been administered. “Chinese courts often hand down the death sentence with two years probation. 

This unique sentence is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court.” It also stressed that cases of drug smuggling into the People’s Republic of China is giving Nigeria a bad image in China, adding that, “Presently, there are more than 500 Nigerians serving jail terms for drug trafficking and over 200 languishing in jail for illegal residence in China. “The Consular problems arising from this barrage of drug related activities of Nigerians have overwhelmed the staff of the Consulate-General of Nigeria in Guangzhou, China. “On 31st July, 2017, a Nigerian with drugs in his system died aboard the Ethiopian airlines flight to Guangzhou”.

In reaction, Nigeria Consul General to China, Ambassador Wale Oloko informed the need to equip the Mission regulating authorities. He noted that the Nigerian Mission in Guangzhou, China, is the busiest among the four Nigerian Missions in China and should be quipped with necessary tools to address affectively and follow up cases affecting some Nigerian immigrants to China, while pointing out that the Mission should not be facing serious financial predicament, which also include non-payment of Foreign Service Allowances (FSA) and rent on the accommodation of the Home-Based Officers and salaries of locally recruited staff. 

The Mission currently is said to be facing ejection notice from its present location after its inability to pay its rent. And if it goes through, it would be the second time within a period of ten months to witness such embarrassment, having earlier been ejected from its previous location in November, 2016 for non-payment of accumulated rent to give way to the Consulate-General of an African country and now the owners of the property have taken the Mission to court to recover outstanding rent fees.

Vanguard