Adults aged 50 and over are becoming more visible in West African drug operations, although data availability and official understandings of this phenomenon vary across states.
Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) website suggests that at least 32 people aged 60 to 101 have been arrested in Nigeria since January. When suspects aged 50-59 are included, arrests rise to 48. Rough calculations suggest a ratio of about one elder to every five younger adults arrested.
NDLEA Media and Advocacy Director Femi Babafemi told ISS Today that available data, including ‘consistent arrests of suspects aged 55 to 80 nationwide, already reflects a systemic pattern rather than a random occurrence.’
Besides Nigeria, Mr Babafemi said drug syndicates were increasingly deploying elderly couriers across porous land borders and informal maritime routes in the rest of West Africa. Suspects aged 65-70 have been arrested for trafficking cannabis in Cameroon and Senegal.
While several countries document individual cases, regional information is not available from the West African Epidemiology Network on Drug Use. Existing data is not formatted for comparative analysis, making elderly drug couriers a poorly studied demographic.
