A shipment large enough to count among Nigeria’s biggest anti narcotics seizures in years has landed in NDLEA custody: 6,778.5 kilograms, roughly 6.8 tons, of a potent cannabis strain known as Canadian Loud, found hidden inside two shipping containers examined jointly by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, the Nigeria Customs Service and other security agencies at Apapa Port.
The containers had travelled a deliberately roundabout route designed to evade detection. The first left Toronto on April 16, 2026, moved by rail to Montreal, then by sea via Tangier in Morocco before reaching Tin Can Island Port and finally Apapa, where it was intercepted on June 10. The second departed Montreal on May 1, was trans-shipped onto another vessel, arrived at Tin Can Island on June 4 and moved to Apapa on June 22, where NDLEA officers were already waiting. NDLEA Chairman Brig Gen Buba Marwa, represented at the handover ceremony by Director of Seaport Operations ACGN Ibinabo Archie-Abia, said months of intelligence work by the agency’s special investigation and marine intelligence units, in partnership with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Nigeria Customs Service, made tracking the shipments from Canada to Nigeria possible.
Marwa framed the two seizures, recorded on June 15 and June 24, 2026, as a clear signal to international drug cartels that Nigeria is closing its borders to illicit narcotics, and said the agency’s work does not stop at intercepting shipments. Investigators intend to pursue the financiers and beneficiaries behind the trafficking networks, seizing criminal assets so traffickers derive no benefit from the trade. He credited the outcome to intelligence sharing and inter agency cooperation among NDLEA, Customs and other security agencies, calling it a demonstration of what coordinated, intelligence led operations can achieve against transnational organized crime, and framed the seizure as part of a broader, intensified campaign against trafficking under his leadership.
