Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Arab Emirates’ National Drug Enforcement Authority in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, formalizing a partnership the two countries had been negotiating since at least late 2025.
NDLEA chairman Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa signed the pact on the sidelines of the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, a gathering the UAE is hosting in Abu Dhabi through October 1. The agreement was announced in a statement from the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, made available to Sunday PUNCH.
Marwa said the agreement would deepen intelligence-sharing and joint enforcement operations along what he described as a heavily trafficked Nigeria-UAE corridor. “The agreement was the culmination of years of engagement between the two agencies,” he said, adding that it was designed to disrupt networks exploiting the strong travel and trade links between the two countries.
Read Also: NDLEA Busts More Drug Dealers In Enugu, Lagos, Abuja
According to reporting compiled by The Eastern Update, the signing follows a courtesy visit UAE’s ambassador to Nigeria, Salem Saeed Musabbeh Alshamsi, paid Marwa in Abuja roughly ten months ago, during which the envoy first floated the prospect of a formal MoU and pledged the UAE’s readiness to exchange intelligence on drug dealers operating between the two countries. Marwa accepted the invitation to travel to the UAE for further talks at the time, setting up Saturday’s signing.
Marwa disclosed that the agency intercepted about 354.7 kilograms of illicit drugs, including cocaine, cannabis, tramadol, rohypnol, ecstasy and khat, in consignments bound for the UAE between 2021 and 2026. He said the seizures led to the arrest and prosecution of 47 suspects, figures he said underscored the need for closer bilateral cooperation. The new partnership, he said, would build on liaison-officer exchanges, operational intelligence sharing and technical cooperation already in place between the two agencies, and the UAE has agreed to supply Nigerian travelers with a list of prohibited items to help prevent inadvertent violations of its drug laws.
Sheikh Zayed bin Hamad Al Nahyan, chairman of the UAE’s National Drug Enforcement Authority, called the agreement a natural progression of existing cooperation between the two countries and reaffirmed his government’s commitment to working with Nigeria against trafficking networks.
Read Also: Army’s Dangana Opens Five-Day Commanders’ Course In Jos
The UAE pact is the second such bilateral drug-enforcement agreement Nigeria has concluded this year with a Gulf-region partner, following an earlier MoU with Saudi Arabia’s General Directorate of Narcotics Control that took more than three years of discussion to finalize. That agreement’s provisions, which included joint training at Saudi facilities, shared operational logistics and exchange of data on convicted traffickers, are broadly similar to the framework NDLEA and UAE officials described for their own new pact, though full terms of Saturday’s agreement had not been published as of filing.
Marwa used the Abu Dhabi appearance to lay out the wider scope of NDLEA’s domestic operations, telling delegates that the agency had arrested more than 91,000 suspects nationwide between January 2021 and July 2026, including 243 people it classified as major drug barons. He said the agency had seized over 15.5 million kilograms of illicit drugs and precursor chemicals in that period, secured 16,469 convictions, and provided counselling, treatment or rehabilitation services to more than 53,000 drug users. Its public awareness campaign, the War Against Drug Abuse initiative, has reached close to 5.9 million Nigerians through school and community outreach, according to figures Marwa presented.
The agency’s leadership has pursued an expanding roster of international partnerships since President Bola Tinubu reappointed Marwa to a second five-year term late last year, when he told NDLEA staff that traffickers should expect an intensified crackdown. Nigeria has separately cited interceptions of Australia- and UK-bound narcotics hidden in cargo shipments and the arrest of foreign nationals attempting to move synthetic drugs through Lagos as evidence of the agency’s reach beyond its immediate borders.
Both agencies said Saturday’s agreement would translate into stronger intelligence-sharing, joint operations and coordinated efforts to dismantle trafficking networks operating along the Nigeria-UAE route, building on liaison arrangements the two sides had maintained even before the formal signing.
The Abu Dhabi congress that hosted the signing is the first Crime Congress since Kyoto in 2021 and only the fifteenth held anywhere since the United Nations began convening the event in 1955. Organizers have built this year’s gathering around the theme of accelerating crime prevention and criminal justice while adapting to rapid digital transformation, drawing several thousand delegates, ministers and law enforcement officials from around the world for a program running through October 1. Nigerian officials have used past editions of the congress and similar UN forums to press for stronger bilateral drug-enforcement commitments from Gulf and Asian partners, arguing that Nigeria’s position as a transit and, at times, destination market for narcotics moving between Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia requires sustained cooperation rather than one-off interceptions.
NDLEA has increasingly framed its international agreements as complementary rather than duplicative, noting that intelligence gathered under the Saudi Arabia pact and the liaison arrangements it maintains with agencies in the United Kingdom and Australia already feed into a shared operational picture the agency uses to flag suspicious shipments before they leave Nigerian ports and airports. Officials from both NDLEA and the UAE’s drug enforcement authority said they expected the new framework to be operational within weeks of Saturday’s signing, though neither side gave a specific date for the first joint activity under the pact.
