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A fairly typical recent morning at Murtala Mohammed, Lagos’s main airport, saw four traffickers carrying cocaine, heroin or marijuana caught, arrested and x-rayed before noon. All but one of them lived abroad, in Belgium, India and Spain. Stuck without money or just looking for more, they had agreed to swallow the stuff or slip it into their luggage.
West Africa is the newest centre for trafficking drugs into Europe. European demand for cocaine and heroin is rising fast and dealers, faced with intense scrutiny on familiar import routes, have been obliged to find new ones. Cocaine from the Andes is arriving at West Africa’s ports, airports and border crossings. Heroin from Afghanistan is coming in too.
Nigeria is not the only victim of the growing trade. Guinea-Bissau, a small country emerging from civil war and a string of coups, has seen its tiny export economy overrun by illegal drugs. But as the economic hub of west Africa, Nigeria has, inevitably, also become its drug-trafficking hub. Drugs have been trickling across Nigeria’s borders since the 1980s, but over the past few years the trickle has become a torrent.
Nigeria’s history of fighting the scourge is not the sort to discourage dealers. Its drug agency, founded in 1990, was immediately immersed in scandal when its own top people were themselves found to be involved in trafficking.
Organized criminals have also got into the business. The country’s anti-graft body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, says it often stumbles upon drugs during money-laundering raids. The most powerful crime syndicates are involved, says Lamorde Ibrahim, the commission’s director of operations in Lagos. A six-person group from his office and the drug-enforcement agency work incognito, unknown even to colleagues.
The network of gangs and dealers means that drugs are increasingly available on Nigeria’s streets. At the Lagos State Rehab and Vocational Training Centre former junkies tell stories of taking to drugs while at university, or jobless, or under pressure from the city’s notorious gangs of “area boys”. Enough cannabis to roll one cigarette can be found on the streets for as little as 20 naira (about 15 cents).
Reform of the drug agency may have begun to be serious. Traffickers are often confused by their arrest, having been promised safe passage through the airport by junior officers, who can now no longer sneak them through. The intentions may be better, but the agency still complains of its lack of equipment and manpower.
Nigeria is the only West African country on America’s list of major drug-producing and transit countries. It is concerned enough to have sent Tom Schweich, the State Department’s international drugs man, to Nigeria. He promised to supply the latest body-cavity x-ray machines to four of Nigeria’s international airports. New technology like this will be installed first at the airports and then, more slowly, at ports and land borders. Not too slowly, Nigerians hope. Their country is already notorious for corruption and financial crime; the last thing it needs is narcotics too.
Jogging your memory: the use of article with geographic names.
We use no article:
- with names of continents, countries, states, provinces, cities, towns, villages: Europe, England, Moscow, Brighton etc.
But we use the definite article:
- with names of some countries: the USA, the Netherlands;
- with names of some provinces: the Crimea, the Rurh;
- with the city: the Hague.
Names of oceans, seas, straits, channels, rivers, lakes usually take the definite article: the Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea, the Bering Strait, the English Channel, the Thames, the Baikal (but: Lake Baikal).
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