Inside NDLEA’s Operation ‘Mkpochapu’, By Emmanuel Onwubiko

“An unexamined life is not worth living”. SOCRATES.

There is an old Igbo saying: when a mother insists on order in her home, peace returns.

In Igbo philosophy, “mkpochapu” means meticulous house-cleaning — not a quick, polite sweep, but a thorough, uncompromising purification. It is the determined act of removing not only the visible dirt but the hidden grime, the stubborn stains, and the very source of infestation. It is an ethic that springs from the quiet authority of elders: sweeping out the old grime of dishonesty, uprooting the weeds of indiscipline, and restoring integrity to the very foundation.

Applied to the state, the home becomes the nation; and applied to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) under Brig.-Gen. Buba Marwa, it becomes a clinical offensive against the narcotics entrenchment in Nigeria.

Mkpochapu is not a light sweep with a broom; it is ritual, method, and insistence. It is the refusal to live under the slow corrosion of accepted filth. When Marwa took the helm of the NDLEA in January 2021, the country’s drug problem was more than a law-and-order issue; it was a structural rot — a house with termites eating at its beams. Marwa did not enter with fanfare about “new beginnings” or mere promises of reform. He entered with the broom, the bucket, and the resolve of one who intends to cleanse every room.

READ ALSO:Guinea-bound cocaine, loud recovered from microwaves, lipsticks in Lagos as NDLEA nabs wanted drug kingpin

From the beginning, it was clear he was not interested in cosmetic solutions. He did not target only the low-level peddlers that previous sweeps had caught for public show. Instead, the NDLEA under his watch turned its gaze to the so-called untouchables — the barons with powerful connections, the shadowy financiers, and the socially embedded cartels whose roots had been allowed to deepen over decades. The message was blunt: no one, however protected or adorned in influence, was beyond the reach of the broom.

This is mkpochapu in its purest form — not a public relations mission, but a moral one. In the Igbo home, when the compound is overrun with weeds, you do not merely trim the leaves; you uproot the plants, shake out the soil, and burn the roots. In NDLEA’s strategy, that house is Nigeria; the weeds are the drug syndicates; the corners are airports, seaports, land borders, markets, warehouses, worship centres — even holy shrines.

To call what has unfolded since then merely an “anti-drug campaign” is true but incomplete. The agency adopted, and has sustained, a mode of governance — institutional purification. This work is not primarily about theatrical arrests or sensational press conferences. It is about a philosophy that treats drug trafficking as a sickness of the house — a domestic invasion that requires, first, courage and, second, a meticulous refusal to ignore the corners where the rot hides.

That refusal changed where the NDLEA looked. Traffickers once thrived in blind spots: ceremonial routes, religious pilgrimages, courier consignments, maritime grey zones, and the facades of philanthropy and legitimate commerce. Once NDLEA began applying sustained intelligence, high-tech screening, inter-agency cooperation, and targeted interdictions, those blind spots began to shrink. The result has been a series of seizures and arrests that once seemed impossible.

Some cases have shocked the conscience. In Lagos and Abuja airports, operatives intercepted couriers bound for the Holy Lands carrying cocaine hidden inside Bibles and Qur’ans — the most sacred texts desecrated into smuggling tools. Others were arrested having ingested dozens of pellets of cocaine or heroin before boarding flights for religious pilgrimages. The grotesque imagery is hard to overstate: faith weaponised as camouflage for poison. In mkpochapu terms, the cleaner must sweep even the altar.

Equally startling were cases involving Nigerians attempting to smuggle massive quantities of cocaine into Iran — at a time when the Middle East was fraught with geopolitical tensions, and Iran itself faced bombardment threats from Israel and the United States. These traffickers, whether ignorant or indifferent to the risks, were willing to use such dangerous corridors for their trade. Intercepting them was more than an arrest; it was a disruption of a network that could have deepened Nigeria’s entanglement in volatile transnational crime rings.

The NDLEA also reinforced the doorways and windows — the nation’s ports, airports, and maritime domain. By upgrading the marine unit into a full-fledged Marine Command, the agency acknowledged that Nigeria’s long coastline had become a porous artery for trafficking. This was not a vanity reform; it was a structural seal. The result has been sustained maritime interceptions, from large cannabis shipments off the Lagos coast to multi-ton cocaine seizures in deepwater operations. In mkpochapu, you don’t just sweep the floor; you close the holes that let in the rats.

The clean-up has been unapologetically frontal. NDLEA has not stopped at couriers; it has gone for the infrastructure that sustains them: the bank accounts, warehouses, transport fleets, and real estate holdings that form the backbone of the trade. In one case, dozens of bank accounts linked to a suspected kingpin were frozen, choking the financial oxygen that allowed him to operate. This is textbook mkpochapu — removing not just the dirt but the containers that store it.

Cleaning also requires moral discipline from the cleaners themselves. Marwa has repeatedly warned NDLEA operatives against compromise, knowing that a corrupt cleaner will simply push dirt from one corner to another. Under his leadership, the agency has emphasised training, internal surveillance, and swift disciplinary measures for misconduct. The broom must remain clean, or the entire exercise is pointless.

But mkpochapu is not only coercive; it is curative. Sweeping away the filth without changing habits merely resets the cycle. That is why NDLEA has paired enforcement with rehabilitation and prevention: community outreach, drug education in schools, counselling centres, and treatment facilities. In the Igbo home, cleaning day is also a lesson for the children — they learn why you keep the house clean, not just how.

Of course, this scale of purification comes with tensions. Public scepticism shadows any institution with expanded powers. People ask: Are seized consignments fully accounted for? Do prosecutions follow due process? Such questions, far from being inconvenient, are essential to the integrity of mkpochapu. For a house to remain clean, its occupants must trust the one holding the broom.

Meanwhile, traffickers adapt. They invent new concealments, exploit conflict zones, and pivot to emerging markets. The recent spate of arrests involving synthetic opioids, concealed within seemingly harmless shipments like food seasoning or baby formula, demonstrates this constant evolution. In mkpochapu terms, the cleaner must inspect even sealed jars.

Success, under this philosophy, is not just counted in tonnes seized. It is measured in the erosion of trade routes, the collapse of once-untouchable empires, the abandonment of cultivation areas for illicit crops, and the weakening of street-level drug economies. It is when the neighbours stop whispering about who “owns” the street corner, and when communities reclaim their spaces for legitimate life.

There is also a deeper moral politics here. Mkpochapu asks society to reject the narcotics trade’s seductive myths — that illicit wealth is quick, that influence trumps legality, that spiritual cover can sanctify crime. These stories thrive in silence. By confronting them publicly and persistently, NDLEA reaffirms the civic truth: sanctity does not excuse lawlessness, and no corner is exempt from the broom.

Cleaning is never a solo job. Customs, immigration, the navy, police, and international partners must all be part of the sweep. Under Marwa, cooperation with agencies like INTERPOL, the DEA, and neighbouring countries’ anti-narcotics units has strengthened. Intelligence is shared faster, joint operations are more frequent, and extraditions are pursued with renewed vigour. In house-cleaning terms, this is inviting the neighbours to help you block the drainage so the dirt does not flow back in.

Ultimately, a cleansed house must feel different to its occupants. Streets become safer, addicts find help instead of handcuffs, and young people see real alternatives to the drug trade. Without that, mkpochapu is just an annual ritual. With it, the sweep becomes a transformation.

The lesson is clear: mkpochapu is scalable. The same ethic that governs a clean home can govern a clean nation. It is not triumphalist — it is patient, stubborn, and rooted in a refusal to coexist with rot. The NDLEA’s application of it has not been flawless, but it has shown that a philosophy, when paired with tools and courage, can change the texture of national life.

When the Igbo mother finishes cleaning, she does not boast about the size of the dustpan. She looks around to see if her family’s habits have changed, if the windows are sealed, if the vermin have nowhere to hide. In that moment, she knows the work has been worth it.

Operation Mkpochapu, in this sense, is not just NDLEA’s project — it is Nigeria’s. If the nation keeps to it, the house will not only be clean; it will stay that way. If a nation is a home, its purity reflects the integrity of its people and institutions.

NDLEA’s Mkpochapu concept affirms that evil can be swept away, that broken habits can be mended, and that a house, once clean, stands tall — not in empty bravado, but in the quiet strength that comes from restored order and honour.

*Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko, Founder of HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA), was a NATIONAL COMMISSIONER AT THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA.