By Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko
When the custodians of tradition; the kings, obis, emirs, Obas who still command unquestioned moral authority in towns and villages across Nigeria, begin to use their offices to denounce drug abuse and hand over suspects to law enforcement, something fundamental shifts in the fight against narcotics. Under Brigadier-General Buba Marwa’s stewardship of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), that shift is happening. What had too often been framed as a problem for police and hospitals is being recast as a communal crisis that requires chiefs, religious leaders, parents and market women to act in concert. The results are not merely symbolic: they are practical, measurable, and (crucially) scalable.
Marwa’s approach has been deliberate. He has moved the NDLEA beyond raids and seizures, folding prevention, rehabilitation and community-level intelligence into an integrated campaign that treats drug control as a whole-of-society mission. In the last 18 months, the agency reported seizure figures that underline the scale of the challenge and the urgency of public buy-in: the NDLEA said it intercepted as many as 1.3 billion tramadol tablets over a recent 18-month period; a statistic that shocks because it reframes drug abuse as a supply-chain failure that reaches into households across the country. That level of seizure turns the conversation about drugs into one fit for kings and councils, not just courtrooms and clinics.
What makes Marwa’s model noteworthy; and why it ought to be studied and widened, is how quickly he turned ceremonial meetings into durable partnerships. High-profile visits have multiplied: respected monarchs, from the Alaafin of Oyo to numerous local rulers, have publicly met with the NDLEA chair, offering their blessings and institutional networks to grass-roots campaigns. These are not perfunctory photo-ops. When Marwa asks traditional rulers to mobilise imams, pastors and village elders to identify and refer young people abusing drugs (and when those rulers answer) the NDLEA gains privileged local intelligence it historically did not have. The Alaafin’s pledge of support after a courtesy visit to Marwa last week demonstrated that the traditional council is ready to be an active node in a national early-warning system against illicit substances.
Why this matters is partly cultural and partly tactical. Culturally, in many Nigerian communities the proclamation of a traditional ruler carries moral and practical force. A warning from an oba or emir is more likely to move a parent than a press release from Abuja; it can change the behaviour of young men who still measure themselves against the expectations of their lineage. Tactically, traditional rulers are embedded in the social geography of their domains. They see who comes and goes, who is withdrawn from communal life, and where suspicious activity concentrates. When properly organised, they can become the NDLEA’s most effective human sensors, tipping off operatives before a trafficking corridor hardens into an entrenched market.
Marwa has not been coy about the change in strategy. He has repeatedly urged a collective response that pairs hard interdiction with soft interventions: education, counselling, rehabilitation and community policing. At seminars set up by local councils and in speeches across states, he has warned that drug use in Africa is projected to rise sharply, and that Nigeria is already among the worst hit; an alarm designed to move rulers from ceremonial guardianship to active partnership. The man with the boots on the ground and the legal mandate has, crucially, offered an explicit role to the custodians of custom.
There is an operational lesson embedded in these public meetings. Traditional rulers possess three things that modern bureaucracies struggle to replicate: moral authority, persistent local presence, and access to informal dispute-resolution mechanisms. Marwa’s team is learning to convert those assets into practical outputs: community screening for early signs of drug dependency, facilitation of referrals to NDLEA-supported rehabilitation centres, and assistance in prosecutorial follow-through where trafficking networks are discovered. He has also sought the help of civic guardianship mechanisms: where a chief recommends local vigil, the NDLEA can validate and then support it with counselling and, where necessary, lawful enforcement. This is a pragmatic hybrid of enforcement and reconciliation that reduces recidivism by restoring social ties as part of recovery. Reports from NDLEA engagements show that governors, council chairmen and, importantly, traditional rulers, are being folded into that hybrid model.
The political calculus is also in Marwa’s favour. Traditional rulers’ endorsements blunt populist complaints about selective enforcement and perceived heavy-handedness. When a respected monarch publicly backs an operation or supports a rehabilitation drive, it lowers the political temperature and invites voluntary compliance. The NDLEA’s messaging, therefore, is less “we will punish” and more “we will restore”; and that rhetorical shift helps reduce the stigma that keeps many families from seeking help for addicted relatives. The agency’s pivot toward compassionate rehabilitation is not an abandonment of enforcement; it is an attempt to make interdiction work by shrinking demand as well as supply.
This is not to suggest the strategy is without friction. Traditional authority in Nigeria is a complex mosaic; not every ruler has the bandwidth or the incentives to join a national campaign. Some crowns are tied closely to local politics; others preside over communities where criminal networks have already co-opted parts of the traditional order. There are risks in relying on feudal or patronage systems to police crime: if not properly guaranteed by law and oversight, nobles can themselves be compromised, and ancient titles can be used to shield family members from scrutiny. The NDLEA must therefore design partnerships that are transparent and accountable; public endorsements must be accompanied by formal memoranda of understanding, clear referral protocols, and mechanisms for independent monitoring.
Practically, what does a strengthened partnership between NDLEA and traditional rulers look like? First, institutional clarity: the NDLEA should draft a compact for traditional rulers that outlines roles, responsibilities and limits. This compact should codify how local intelligence is gathered, anonymised when necessary, and transmitted to NDLEA operatives; it should also set out safeguarding clauses to protect whistleblowers and to penalise complicity. Second, capacity building: chiefs and their palace councils need short, practical training on recognising signs of substance use and on the legal constraints of community responses. Third, integration with rehabilitation pathways: when a ruler identifies a young person in trouble, there must be a well-advertised, low-stigma avenue for getting that person into counselling and treatment, not automatic incarceration.
There are immediate, low-cost steps that can be taken. The NDLEA can embed liaison officers with state traditional councils, daily or weekly, to build trust and streamline referrals. It can provide drug-awareness toolkits for palaces; simple, culturally adapted pamphlets and radio-talk formats that traditional rulers can use during town criers, festivals and market days. The agency can also create a discreet digital tip-line that allows palace aides to pass information without risking public scandal for victims whose families prefer privacy. Importantly, these measures need not be expensive. If properly prioritised, an expanded community surveillance and referral system can be built incrementally and focused initially on high-risk local government areas where seizures and treatment referrals are already high. The NDLEA’s previous declaration that it is deploying personnel to local government areas and engaging with umbrella bodies such as ALGON (the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria) shows a recognition of the value of local presence; now it should operationalise that presence with palace-level outreach.
Funding and incentives will matter. Traditional rulers operate on shoestring budgets; offering modest grants for community rehabilitation centres, or stipends for palace-based drug-liaison officers, would make cooperation concrete. The NDLEA should not buy loyalty: instead, it should pay for services that expand public goods (counselling rooms, school-based prevention programmes, training for community health workers) on the basis of measurable outputs. Success could be measured by reduced local seizures, fewer drug-related arrests among youth, and increased uptake of voluntary treatment. Donor partnerships, corporate social responsibility funds and state contributions can expand the fiscal space for these interventions. The NDLEA’s recent public engagements and national seminars provide natural moments to pitch such joint funding mechanisms to governors and philanthropists.
Legal and policy levers must accompany community mobilisation. The NDLEA should work with the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly to embed protections for community informants and to support diversion programmes that send low-level users into rehabilitation rather than prisons. Marwa has publicly advocated creative prevention measures; including the controversial suggestion that couples present a drug-free certificate before marriage, and whether that particular idea is adopted or not, it demonstrates that the agency is thinking beyond conventional enforcement. What matters is the creation of a legal architecture that enables community referrals to translate into psychiatric help, vocational training and social reintegration, not automatic criminal records.
There is a regional lesson in Marwa’s strategy as well. The projected rise in drug use across Africa (estimates cited by NDLEA and partners suggest a significant uptick in the coming years) implies that national wins will be precarious unless they are synchronised with neighbouring states’ enforcement and prevention efforts. Traditional rulers who straddle borders, or who wield influence in cross-border markets, become essential partners in shutting down trafficking corridors that do not respect nation-state boundaries. Marwa’s public calls for international partnerships and for the NDLEA’s two-pronged strategy of interdiction and rehabilitation point toward a model that can be replicated regionally: embed community authority in cross-border task forces that combine palace networks with customs, police and health agencies.
There is also a generational urgency. Nigeria’s demographics are tilted toward youth; when a self-destructive drug culture takes root among adolescents and young adults, the social and economic fallout is a cascade. Traditional rulers have an unexpected advantage in reaching older adolescents: their moral lectures, town festivals and rites of passage still command attention. If the NDLEA and palace-based leaders can turn those moments into prevention touchpoints, they can reduce initiation rates and make rehabilitation more socially acceptable.
We should not sentimentalise the role of traditional rulers, nor should we ignore hard questions about accountability. But neither should we underestimate the practical dividends of bringing them fully into the drug-control ecosystem. Marwa’s breakthrough is less about personality than about policy: he has made the case that drug control cannot succeed if left to courts and wards alone. He has reframed the crisis as a civic failure; one that requires moral suasion, social repair and targeted enforcement in equal measure. The early outcomes (tapestries of support from palaces across states, the deployment of NDLEA operatives to local government areas, and the visible willingness of notable monarchs to lend their voice to the campaign) suggest a template that can be tightened and exported.
If Nigeria is to turn a corner, the NDLEA must now move from episodic courtesy calls to institutionalised partnership. That means clear compacts with traditional councils, training and modest resourcing, legal protection for informants and diversion pathways for users, and the embedding of palace networks in local intelligence and rehabilitation chains. It means turning the pastoral power of chiefs into measurable public health outcomes: fewer addicted youths, reduced trafficking corridors, and communities more willing to treat addiction as sickness rather than sin.
Marwa has opened the door. The Alaafin and other monarchs have stepped through and pledged their support. The next, harder task is to lock that door into a durable mechanism that outlives any single tenure in office. If that happens, Nigeria will have proved that one of its oldest institutions (the throne) can become one of its most effective new tools against a modern scourge. That is a test of imagination and governance. It is also, plainly, a moral imperative.
Selected sources used: reporting from TheCable, NAN, Punch, The Guardian, Gazette, and NDLEA public statements.
EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO is the founder of HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA (NHRC).
