Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said Tuesday it is working with its US and British counterparts to investigate the origins of one of the country's largest drug hauls.
Authorities recovered a ton of cocaine from a container at Lagos' Tincan Island Port.
The shipment, worth more than 338 billion naira ($235 million, €232 million), was discovered during a joint inspection last weekend.
Officials described it as the largest single seizure of cocaine at Tincan Island Port.
Global investigation to find drug smugglers
NDLEA says officers from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) "have already joined the ongoing investigation to track the cartel behind the consignment."
"The essence of collaborating with our international partners on this case is to ensure no stone is left unturned and every gap is sufficiently covered so that ultimately we can get all the masterminds of this huge consignment brought to book wherever they are located across the globe," the NDLEA chair Mohamed Buba Marwa said.
Nigeria is a major transit hub for drugs in West Africa and is also becoming a key producer, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
By Louis Oelofse, DW
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Friday, November 7, 2025
Video - Nigeria’s women-only ride app faces roadblocks
In Abuja, rising cases of “one chance” taxi crimes inspired Monsurah Oluwafuyi and her team to launch HerRyde in 2022. The women-only ride platform connects verified female drivers with female passengers. HerRyde completed over 2,000 trips and empowered women with financial independence. However, the platform suspended operations after a year due to financial constraints.
Central Nigerian town rebuilds religious trust in shadow of Trump's threat
Nigeria, a west African country of 230 million people, is roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north. It is home to myriad conflicts, including jihadist insurgency, that experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.
But Trump has ordered a military intervention in Nigeria to halt what he says are killings of Christians "in very large numbers" by radical Islamists.
Mangu, a small rustic town in Nigeria's central Plateau state located 250 kilometres from the capital Abuja, was the scene of deadly clashes that targeted both Christians and Muslims last year.
Since then community leaders hold regular dialogues to forestall a recurrence.
For decades, Mangu mostly escaped the intercommunal violence that often erupts elsewhere in Nigeria's central "Middle Belt" farming region.
Many of the conflicts in the region have their roots in tensions over land between Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, as the impact of climate change threatens agricultural livelihoods.
Mangu's Muslims and Christians mostly belong to the Mwaghavul tribe, and have lived side by side for decades before the 2024 violence.
The town's central mosque was located in the Christian-dominated district, and the town's biggest church once stood in a Muslim-majority quarter.
Both yellow buildings were torched and destroyed when the farming town of around 300,000 people was ravaged as assailants raided rival districts with guns and machetes after a dispute over land, water and cattle grazing, in January last year.
Twenty-two months later, the charred walls of Umar bin Khatab Juma'at mosque and a roofless and windowless Cocin Kwhagas Lahir church -- still stand as a reminder of the day the town temporarily lost its peace.
"We thank God for the relative peace that has reigned in Mangu," said resident Muhammad Kamilu Aliu, 37, at a hardware market. "There is no more crisis here again".
District head Moses Dawop, underlines the "peace we have been crying for is gaining ground".
Across Mangu, Muslims and Christians are back to doing business together, with religious and community leaders intent on rebuilding trust in the community.
Mangu's main market is abuzz with sellers and buyers mingling while elsewhere on the town's dusty streets, children play, rolling disused motorcycle tyres.
But the local chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Timothy Samson Dalang, and the town's main imam, Ibrahim Hudu Manomi, say that there is still much to be done.
"We've been working day and night to see how we can get ourselves back to the former self that we used to be, as peaceful as we used to be," Manomi said.
For Dalang, cooperation among the religious leaders has been instrumental in thwarting attempts by "hoodlums who are bent to sabotage the peace process" for "selfish reasons."
Rebuilding homes, places of worship and schools torched during the unrest is also taking time.
Leaders want to restore trust first among the followers of the two religions to pre-conflict levels before reconstruction can take place.
Nigerians are wary of Trump's threat to strike radical Islamists.
For many in this central state -- a hotbed of inter-communal violence -- religious persecution is an alien concept and they fear that the White House narrative could roll back years of peacebuilding.
Trump's allegations of Christian persecution will "take us back to square one," said Ghazali Isma'ila Adam, the chief imam of the Plateau state capital Jos.
Jihadists "attack everybody, be it Muslims, Christians, pagans," said Idris Suleiman Gimba, 54, a Muslim restaurateur in northeastern Borno State's capital city, Maiduguri, the epicentre of the 16-year-long jihadist insurgency.
Gimba lost 10 family members in a mosque bombing in neighbouring Yobe State in 2014, during the height of the conflict.
Saidu Sufi, a political science teacher in northwestern Kano state, said terrorists and bandits often hide under religion to carry out their criminal activities.
"We have seen in parts of the northwest where bandits use religious cover by starting their campaign of violence by quoting scripture," Sufi said. "But it is not religious."
For Adams Mamza, 28, a Christian Maiduguri resident working for a car rental firm, Trump's intervention is only welcome if "they can target it on these bandits, Boko Haram, the insurgents."
President Bola Tinubu told his ministers on Thursday as cabinet met for the first time since Trump's threats, that "we want our friends to help us as we step up our fight against terrorism, and we will eliminate it".
But Trump has ordered a military intervention in Nigeria to halt what he says are killings of Christians "in very large numbers" by radical Islamists.
Mangu, a small rustic town in Nigeria's central Plateau state located 250 kilometres from the capital Abuja, was the scene of deadly clashes that targeted both Christians and Muslims last year.
Since then community leaders hold regular dialogues to forestall a recurrence.
For decades, Mangu mostly escaped the intercommunal violence that often erupts elsewhere in Nigeria's central "Middle Belt" farming region.
Many of the conflicts in the region have their roots in tensions over land between Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, as the impact of climate change threatens agricultural livelihoods.
Mangu's Muslims and Christians mostly belong to the Mwaghavul tribe, and have lived side by side for decades before the 2024 violence.
The town's central mosque was located in the Christian-dominated district, and the town's biggest church once stood in a Muslim-majority quarter.
Both yellow buildings were torched and destroyed when the farming town of around 300,000 people was ravaged as assailants raided rival districts with guns and machetes after a dispute over land, water and cattle grazing, in January last year.
Twenty-two months later, the charred walls of Umar bin Khatab Juma'at mosque and a roofless and windowless Cocin Kwhagas Lahir church -- still stand as a reminder of the day the town temporarily lost its peace.
"We thank God for the relative peace that has reigned in Mangu," said resident Muhammad Kamilu Aliu, 37, at a hardware market. "There is no more crisis here again".
District head Moses Dawop, underlines the "peace we have been crying for is gaining ground".
Across Mangu, Muslims and Christians are back to doing business together, with religious and community leaders intent on rebuilding trust in the community.
Mangu's main market is abuzz with sellers and buyers mingling while elsewhere on the town's dusty streets, children play, rolling disused motorcycle tyres.
But the local chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Timothy Samson Dalang, and the town's main imam, Ibrahim Hudu Manomi, say that there is still much to be done.
"We've been working day and night to see how we can get ourselves back to the former self that we used to be, as peaceful as we used to be," Manomi said.
For Dalang, cooperation among the religious leaders has been instrumental in thwarting attempts by "hoodlums who are bent to sabotage the peace process" for "selfish reasons."
Rebuilding homes, places of worship and schools torched during the unrest is also taking time.
Leaders want to restore trust first among the followers of the two religions to pre-conflict levels before reconstruction can take place.
Nigerians are wary of Trump's threat to strike radical Islamists.
For many in this central state -- a hotbed of inter-communal violence -- religious persecution is an alien concept and they fear that the White House narrative could roll back years of peacebuilding.
Trump's allegations of Christian persecution will "take us back to square one," said Ghazali Isma'ila Adam, the chief imam of the Plateau state capital Jos.
Jihadists "attack everybody, be it Muslims, Christians, pagans," said Idris Suleiman Gimba, 54, a Muslim restaurateur in northeastern Borno State's capital city, Maiduguri, the epicentre of the 16-year-long jihadist insurgency.
Gimba lost 10 family members in a mosque bombing in neighbouring Yobe State in 2014, during the height of the conflict.
Saidu Sufi, a political science teacher in northwestern Kano state, said terrorists and bandits often hide under religion to carry out their criminal activities.
"We have seen in parts of the northwest where bandits use religious cover by starting their campaign of violence by quoting scripture," Sufi said. "But it is not religious."
For Adams Mamza, 28, a Christian Maiduguri resident working for a car rental firm, Trump's intervention is only welcome if "they can target it on these bandits, Boko Haram, the insurgents."
President Bola Tinubu told his ministers on Thursday as cabinet met for the first time since Trump's threats, that "we want our friends to help us as we step up our fight against terrorism, and we will eliminate it".
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Video - Abuja conference seeks faith-based solutions to insecurity in West Africa
Religious leaders and policymakers from across West Africa are in Abuja, Nigeria for a three-day conference on peace and security. The forum, hosted by the Economic Community of West African States and Jam’iyyatu Ansariddeen, a global Islamic organisation, seeks non-military solutions to extremism by promoting education, moral values, and youth inclusion. The conference aims to produce a roadmap for peace that makes faith a force for unity.
Emirates to resume Nigeria flights after nearly two years
Dubai's Emirates airline will resume flight schedules to Nigeria from Oct. 1, it said on Thursday, ending a close to two-year halt to flights.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) stopped issuing visas to Nigerians in 2022 after Emirates suspended flights between the nations because of an inability to repatriate funds from Nigeria.
"We are excited to resume our services to Nigeria. We thank the Nigerian government for their partnership and support in re-establishing this route and we look forward to welcoming passengers back on board,"
The Lagos-Dubai service has been popular with Nigerian customers in the past and Emirates said it hopes to reconnect travellers to Dubai and onwards to more than 140 destination with its resumption of services.
The resumption of schedules also includes cargo flights, the statement said.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) stopped issuing visas to Nigerians in 2022 after Emirates suspended flights between the nations because of an inability to repatriate funds from Nigeria.
"We are excited to resume our services to Nigeria. We thank the Nigerian government for their partnership and support in re-establishing this route and we look forward to welcoming passengers back on board,"
Adnan Kazim, the airline's deputy president and chief commercial officer, said in a statement.
The Lagos-Dubai service has been popular with Nigerian customers in the past and Emirates said it hopes to reconnect travellers to Dubai and onwards to more than 140 destination with its resumption of services.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met last September in Abu Dhabi and discussed the lifting of the visa ban and new investments into Africa's most populous country.
The resumption of schedules also includes cargo flights, the statement said.
By Ope Adetayo, Reuters
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)