Businessman Paul Mbadugha, travelling to Vietnam, was arrested by officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja after he was found to be in possession of cocaine.
The 54-year-old suspect was intercepted at the gate of Abuja airport last Monday while boarding Qatar Airways flight QR 1432 to Hanoi, Vietnam via Doha.
Anti-drug agency spokesman Femi Babafemi said in a statement on Sunday that after four days of monitoring his excretion habits, Mbadugha had excreted a total of 88 packets of cocaine weighing a total of 1.71 kilograms.
Babafemi said in Mbadugha’s statement that the latter claimed to be a Lagos-based businessman and that he was given the cocaine pellets by a friend in the Isolo area of the state to swallow and then ship them to Vietnam for a fee of $2,000.
The spokesman also said that NDLEA officials intercepted a consignment of 800 grams of Loud, a synthetic cannabis strain hidden in noodles, en route to Congo at the export hall of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos. He added that a subsequent operation at the Alaba International Market in the Ojo area of Lagos led to the arrest of the sender of the consignment, Nnamani Sunday, who deals in GSM mobile phones.
He also disclosed that NDLEA agents had seized a large consignment of Loud imported from Canada at the Lagos airport. He further stated that a suspect, Desalu Temitope, who arrived with six cartons on board an Air France flight, was arrested by Narcotics Investigation Department agents during joint security interrogation at the arrivals hall.
He said that a total of 65.8 kilograms of the psychoactive substance were seized in four of the six suitcases. Desalu is said to have stated in his statement that he and an accomplice, who is currently at large, were promised $10,000 if the shipment was successfully delivered in Lagos.
Babafemi also disclosed that NDLEA operatives at the Port Harcourt Port Complex in Onne, Rivers State, during a joint inspection of the containers with operatives of the Nigerian Customs and other port stakeholders last Wednesday, recovered no fewer than 892,400 bottles of Codeine Syrup with a street value of 6,246,800,000.00 Naira from five containers.
He said the opioid bottles were packed in 5,337 cartons with a gross weight of 133,860 kilograms and shipped in five containers from India.
In Ekiti State, NDLEA operatives, assisted by the Nigerian Army and other security agencies and community youths, raided the Ise Forest Reserve in Saalaja Camp in Ise-Ekiti last Wednesday and destroyed 21,800 kilograms of Cannabis sativa from 20 hectares of farmland.
Babafemi said the following day, last Thursday, NDLEA officers on patrol along the Onitsha-Enugu road in Enugu intercepted a Sienna bus marked SKA-24 AG in which 200.2 kilograms of cannabis were seized and the driver, 41-year-old Okoro Emmanuel, was arrested.
He said while the duo Joseph Apeh, 45, and Diamond Nnabuike, 21, were arrested last Monday in Gadar Tamburawa in Kano region with 145,400 tablets of Tramadol, NDLEA operatives in Ogun State last Tuesday arrested 70-year-old Fidelis Egede and three others: Samuel Sylvanus, 31, Jato Samson, 33, and Francis Blessing, 28, when a six-hectare cannabis plantation in Alaka village was raided.
In Abuja, NDLEA officers on patrol along the Kwali-Gwagwalada Expressway last Tuesday intercepted a truck containing 30,000 vials of Pentazocine injections and arrested three suspects: Ifeanyi Sunday, Jeremiah Paul and Edet Ubokobong.
NDLEA agents in Niger State last Thursday arrested Ifeanyi Chukwueze in Kontagora town with 28,500 tablets of Tramadol hidden in a loudspeaker. Their counterparts in Kogi State last Wednesday nabbed Abba Yakubu with 40,000 tablets of the same opioid that were on their way to Kontagora.
Another suspect, 39-year-old Tochukwu Onah, was arrested by NDLEA officials in Paparanda, Lokoja last Thursday with 1,000 vials of Pentazocine injections.
Babafemi said that NDLEA commandos continued their sensitisation lectures on the War on Drug Abuse (WADA) and lobby visits to places of worship, schools, workplaces and palaces of traditional rulers and communities across the country throughout the week.
While congratulating officers and men of the Agency’s NAIA, MMIA, PHPC, FCT, Kogi, Ogun, Ekiti, Kano, Enugu and Niger Commands for the arrests and seizures made last week, he simultaneously commended their compatriots in all Commands across the country for intensifying WADA sensitization lectures and messages in all parts of their areas of responsibility.
Michael Olugbode
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