Nigeria's police set up a squad against cannabis

In 1953, colonial Nigeria established a police anti-narcotics squad to investigate the cannabis trade in the Western Region. It recorded ninety-seven cases of possession and cultivation during its first five months. The episode exposed a gap between what police encountered and what the colonial government reported internationally.

Historian Gernot Klantschnig reconstructs the episode from police reports and government correspondence. His account describes a small, precarious enforcement initiative, rather than a coordinated national campaign.

A prohibited plant that officials said was absent

Cannabis was already restricted under the 1927 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance and its 1935 replacement. Those measures followed international agreements and reserved controlled drugs for authorised medical and scientific purposes.

Police had reported cannabis seizures since the 1930s and issued stronger warnings after the Second World War. Yet government reports continued to deny that Indian hemp grew or was cultivated in Nigeria. Klantschnig treats this discrepancy as evidence of administrative priorities and limited investigation. Official silence did not establish the plant’s absence.

What the squad could see

The squad’s cases provided evidence of possession and cultivation within its field of enforcement. They were not a census of Nigerian cannabis users, nor a measure of the total area planted.

Police accounts associated use with seamen, port workers, former servicemen and people guiding foreign sailors. These descriptions reveal whom officials noticed. The chapter also stresses how little is known about rural consumption during the period, making it difficult to reconstruct a complete market from police files alone.

An uncertain institutional life

The colonial government did not commit to a broad investigation of cannabis despite the squad’s findings. Seized quantities remained relatively small, public attention was limited and resources were scarce.

According to Klantschnig, the squad was disbanded less than five years after its establishment, even as arrests and seizures increased. Its existence therefore should not be mistaken for a steadily expanding enforcement system.

Before cannabis became a national crisis

After independence, seizure figures rose sharply in 1962 and newspapers gave cannabis greater prominence. The 1966 Indian Hemp Decree later imposed much harsher penalties under military rule.

The 1953 squad belongs to that longer history, while showing how uneven colonial enforcement had been. It was an institutional response to an existing prohibition, rather than Nigeria’s first law against cannabis.^[1]