President Bola Tinubu has renewed the appointment of Brigadier-General Buba Marwa (rtd) as chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for another five-year term.
The announcement was made in a statement issued by the president’s special adviser on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on Friday.
Mr Marwa, first appointed in January 2021 by former President Muhammadu Buhari, will now remain in office until 2031.
He previously chaired the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Drug Abuse from 2018 to 2020.
The retired military officer once served as military governor of Lagos and Borno States.
He is a graduate of the Nigerian Military School and the Nigerian Defence Academy.
After commissioning as a second lieutenant in 1973, he served as brigade major of the 23 Armoured Brigade, Aide-de-Camp to then Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant-General Theophilus Danjuma and academic registrar at the NDA.
He later served as deputy defence adviser at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, DC and defence adviser to the Nigerian Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
Buba Marwa holds postgraduate degrees in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and in public administration from Harvard University.
Under his leadership, NDLEA has recorded arrests of more than 73,000 drug mules and barons and seized over 15 million kilogrammes of various hard drugs.
The agency has also carried out campaigns on drug abuse nationwide.
Tinubu described the reappointment as an endorsement of Marwa’s work.
He urged the NDLEA chairman to continue efforts to counter drug trafficking and drug abuse.
NDLEA is Nigeria’s federal agency mandated to eliminate the growing, processing, manufacturing, selling, exporting and trafficking of hard drugs.
The agency arrested 18,500 suspected traffickers and seized 2.6 million kilograms of illicit drugs in 2024, with 3,250 convictions recorded.
It also destroyed 220 hectares of cannabis farms and rehabilitated 8,200 drug abusers that year.
