LAGOS, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's anti-drug agency said on Tuesday it has recently busted two methamphetamine manufacturing facilities in the southern part of the country and seized a large quantity of materials used for the production of methamphetamine.
Three suspects, including owners of the two facilities and a chemist who produced the drugs for them, were arrested in the operations on Saturday in the southern states of Lagos and Anambra, said Mohamed Buba Marwa, chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), at a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria's capital.
Marwa said the feat was achieved after "months of painstaking intelligence gathering, diligent tracking, and coordinated offensive action."
"We recovered 258.74 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine and various precursor chemicals used for the production of the toxic drug," said the anti-drug agency chief.
He said the agency has deployed all available assets to find the primary source of manufacturing of the drug in Nigeria, following reports of methamphetamine abuse in the last quarter of 2021, predominantly in the southeast region.
So far a total of eight suspects have been arrested and several facilities busted in the past seven months in operations against the groups behind the methamphetamine scourge, he said. ■