The ongoing discovery of clandestine methamphetamine labs the growing interception of methamphetamines attempting to be smuggled out of airports is a growing concern for drug enforcement officials in Nigeria.

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2013, describes the ecosystem for methamphetamines in West Africa as seemingly young and extraordinarily profitable. They describe how conditions are ripe for flows of resources to be outsourced to this part of the world where “the difficulty lies in gaining access to sufficient amounts of precursor chemicals (primarily ephedrine) to produce the drug in commercial quantities. Given the loosely regulated pharmaceutical industry in West Africa, this hurdle can be overcome.”

The barriers for outsourcing the production of crystal meth there are quite low. The drugs are then sent back to the high value markets in East Asia where there is significant demand from a growing pool of middle-class users with increasing disposable incomes. If the products can make it as far as Japan, it is estimated that 1 kilogram of crystal meth can sell for over $100,000 USD. The report also highlights the logistical knowledge of drug traffickers in Nigeria being taken advantage of where, “almost all of the detected trafficking to Asia has involved the use of commercial air couriers, a technique at which Nigerian traffickers excel.

Nigeria’s national drug enforcement agency has made it clear that meth production has become a significant problem. In a statement released in May of this year, they reported that in the last seven years (between 2009-2016) almost a ton of methamphetamines had been confiscated in dozens of home-grown laboratories across the country as well as from at least 162 couriers detained in Nigerian airports over the same period, up from only a third of that a year prior. In 2016, the same agency also reported dismantling the first industrial scale meth laboratory that was estimated to produce four tons of methamphetamines per week.