The Challenge of the Jihadi Drug Captagon

The most striking detail in a recent drug seizure at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport was not simply the quantity or the international route. It was the name of the substance: Captagon.

On August 22, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency announced that it had intercepted 47,200 tablets hidden inside locally made bathing soap, popularly known as Ghana soap. The consignment came from Accra, Ghana, and the suspect arrested in connection with it reportedly said the drugs were destined for northern Nigeria.

In separate operations at the same airport, officials recovered more than 3.9 million tablets of the opioid drugs Tramaking and Tapentadol. The combined value of the seizures exceeded ₦6.2 billion.

For many Nigerians, the names most associated with drug abuse and trafficking are cannabis, cocaine, heroin, tramadol and codeine. Captagon is less familiar. That unfamiliarity, the article argues, is exactly why its appearance should not be treated as just another seizure.

Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant that has become prominent in illegal drug markets in parts of the Middle East. Nigeria recorded another major interception in 2021, when more than 451,000 tablets were seized at Apapa Port in Lagos. Its return shows how the drug trade can change its substances, routes and concealment techniques. Traffickers do not always need elaborate hiding places. Sometimes, they only need to place an illegal product inside something ordinary, such as a box of soap.

The concern is sharper because Nigeria already faces significant substance use. The National Drug Use Survey estimated that 14.3 million Nigerians aged 15 to 64 had used psychoactive substances other than alcohol and tobacco in the year before the survey. The article says the country cannot wait for every unfamiliar drug to become popular before warning people about its dangers, particularly young people who may not know what they are being offered.