African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore has renewed his call for Nigeria to legalise and regulate cannabis, arguing that the country should stop destroying cannabis farms and instead explore the crop’s potential for medicine, industry, employment and government revenue.
Sowore made the position in a Facebook post reacting to images showing operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) destroying a cannabis farm in Nigeria. He criticised the agency’s continued eradication campaign, describing it as an outdated approach that destroys potentially valuable agricultural resources while Nigerians struggle with poverty.
“It is idiotic NDLEA to wake up, put on uniforms, march into farms, and set economically viable crops worth millions of dollars ablaze while your country is drowning in multidimensional poverty,” Sowore wrote.
He called for an end to the destruction of cannabis farms and urged the government to replace prohibition with a tightly regulated system that would permit research and controlled cultivation for legitimate medicinal and industrial purposes.
“You cannot burn your way out of poverty, foolish people!” he added.
Sowore's proposal comes as Nigeria continues to enforce a strict prohibition against cannabis cultivation and trafficking. The NDLEA is legally mandated to combat the illicit production, possession, sale and trafficking of controlled substances, including cannabis.
The scale of the current enforcement campaign is substantial. According to operational data reported in 2025, the NDLEA destroyed more than 672,000 kilogrammes of cannabis cultivated across 35 farms in five states between January and May of that year. The agency also reported destroying about 1.4 million kilogrammes of cannabis among approximately 1.6 million kilogrammes of assorted illicit substances in a major April 2025 destruction exercise covering seizures from Lagos, Ogun and Oyo.
Sowore's argument has therefore reopened a longstanding policy debate: whether Nigeria should continue relying primarily on eradication or investigate a regulated cannabis industry similar to approaches adopted in some other jurisdictions.
Nigeria's multidimensional poverty figures provide important context for the debate. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that 63 percent of Nigerians—about 133 million people—were multidimensionally poor in its 2022 assessment. The index measures deprivation across areas including health, education, living standards, employment and food security.
Supporters of reform argue that a properly controlled cannabis industry could create opportunities for farmers, processors, researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers while generating tax revenue. However, such a policy would require strict licensing, quality control, age restrictions, monitoring of cultivation, prevention of diversion into the illicit market and strong public-health safeguards.
One supporter of the proposal, Lawal Hafiz Onokhua, who is campaigning for the Edo North Senate seat in 2027, said he would sponsor legislation to legalise and regulate cannabis if elected. He specifically pointed to Edo North's agricultural potential, arguing that regulated medicinal and industrial cannabis cultivation could create jobs, attract investment and increase government revenue.
Onokhua also stressed that any reform must be accompanied by strict regulations designed to prevent abuse and protect public health.
The comments section reflected the controversy surrounding the issue. Some supporters described Sowore's position as evidence of forward-looking economic thinking, while others joked about the possible consequences of living near cannabis farms. Another commenter argued that cannabis is already widely available across Nigeria and questioned what prohibition ultimately achieves.
The debate is unlikely to disappear soon. Sowore, who was adopted as the AAC's consensus presidential candidate for the 2027 election in May 2026, is positioning cannabis reform as part of a broader argument for economic and policy transformation.
For now, however, cannabis remains illegal under Nigeria's existing legal framework. Sowore's proposal is therefore not a description of current policy, but a political argument for changing it: move from destroying the crop to regulating it, researching it and potentially turning part of the cannabis economy into a legitimate source of jobs, investment and public revenue.
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