Nearly 60 kilos of marijuana seized in Tawi-Tawi

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January 27, 2026 | 6:56pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Members of the Bangsamoro parliament are to set up anti-narcotics measures for regional application in support of efforts of the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in preventing the trafficking of illegal drugs in all five provinces and three cities in the autonomous region.

Members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament and their figurehead, Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, lauded on Tuesday, January 27, the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for Monday’s confiscation by its agents of 58.4 kilos of dried marijuana, costing P79.8 million, from a Malaysian national and his Filipino accomplice in an entrapment operation in Barangay Pasiagan in Bongao town in Tawi-Tawi.

The suspects, Datu Nur Gerry Wagas, a resident of Barangay Tubig Boh in Tawi-Tawi, and his Malaysian cohort, Aldin Bin Said, are now in the joint custody of the PDEA-BARMM and the Tawi-Tawi Provincial Police Office, awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Macacua and the speaker of the Bangsamoro parliament, the Islamic theologian Mohammad Yacob, separately told reporters that while functions and powers of the PDEA and the Philippine National Police are not devolved to the autonomous regional government, BARMM lawmakers and officials of the region’s local government, health and public order and safety ministries can together enforce local programs complementing state anti-narcotics regulations.

“We can also pass a resolution compelling all local government units in the Bangsamoro region to enforce municipal anti-narcotics policies based on powers and functions of local executives as provided for by the state's Local Government Code, Yacob told reporters during a dialogue on the issue at the BARMM capitol in Cotabato City on Tuesday.

Yacob, who had studied Sharia jurisprudence at the International Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia, said addiction to illegal drugs is “haram,” or forbidden in Islam.

Three lawyers in the BARMM parliament, Naguib Sinarimbo, Suharto Ambolodto and Jet Lim, who is spokesperson of the Bangsamoro law-making body, said regional lawmakers can together embark on extensive programs, along with ministries and support agencies in the autonomous region, and local government units, that can help hasten the anti-narcotics campaign in the autonomous region of national law-enforcement outfits.

Lim, who hails from Tawi-Tawi, and Macacua, who is chairperson of the Bangsamoro Regional Peace and Order Council, separately said they were elated with Monday’s confiscation by PDEA-BARMM agents of 58.4 kilos of marijuana, costing P79.8 million, from two dealers, one of them a Malaysian, during an entrapment operation in Barangay Pasiagan in Bongao, the capital town of Tawi-Tawi.

Benjamin Recites III, director of PDEA-BARMM, said it was relatives of the Filipino suspect and friends in Tawi-Tawi of his Malaysian accomplice who informed their agents about their large-scale peddling of marijuana in different regions in Mindanao and in Metro Manila, enabling them to plot the entrapment operation that led to their arrest.

Recites said local executives, among them Gov. Ysmael Sali, officials of different units in Tawi-Tawi of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and the Navy’s 4th Marine Battalion supported the operation that resulted in the detention of the duo and confiscation of P79.8 million worth of marijuana from them.