NCB Raises Issue Of Nigerians Involved In Trafficking With Their Top Drug Officer

To be sure, this person stated that Nigerians made up 27% (587) of all foreign nationals arrested by Indian drug enforcement agencies.

NCB officials told Marwa and his team about the “reverse smuggling” trend, pointing out that Afghan heroin is trafficked to African countries, including Nigeria, via maritime routes and then sent to India.

They cited a May 2017 NCB operation in which 7kg of Afghan heroin was hidden in the false bottom of a suitcase and transported to Bengaluru airport from Nairobi via Dubai. There were only ten cases of reverse smuggling in 2020, with 35kg of heroin recovered; by 2021, there were 38 cases and 208kg of heroin seized. So far this year, 23 cases of reverse smuggling have been investigated, resulting in the seizure of 61kg of heroin.

Sharing details of a Nigerian syndicate active in India, NCB conveyed that a Nigerian national, Simon Eze Chukwuma, is wanted by them as he looks after the financial flow of drug money and distribution in India. Chukwuma is married to Juliet R Zamveli, a woman from Manipur. She, according to another officer who did not wish to be named either, “hires young men and women from remote areas of north-east India and these people are sent to African countries as drug mules”.

Officials said India had shared 21 inputs with Nigeria since 2019, but responses to 16 of those were still awaited.

According to the second officer, the NCB asked Marwa for a regular exchange of intelligence, information about kingpins in Nigeria, and the possibility of carrying out joint operations.

The issue of Nigerian nationals’ involvement in crimes in India was also raised by Union home minister Amit Shah with Nigerian minister of interior Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola during the “no money for terror” (NMFT) conference in Delhi last month.

Aregbesola told reporters then that he advocates “due process” and “appropriate trial” of those found involved in any illegal activity. “The chief of our National Drug Law Enforcement Agency is visiting India to discuss the capacity building to reduce, eliminate the drug activities. What I advocate is due process and appropriate trial of whoever is caught in any criminal activity in India,” Aregbesola said.

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According to the NCB’s annual report 2021, drug trafficking through maritime routes in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, which is estimated to be around 70% of total illegal drug smuggling in India, posed a major new challenge for law enforcement agencies, and the use of maritime routes by Pakistan- and Afghanistan-based syndicates was expected to increase in the future.