Nigeria's anti-narcotics agency, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, (NDLEA) has arrested a string of suspects across the country this month, among them teenagers barely out of their teens, in operations that netted more than 1.3 million opioid pills and roughly 6,000kg of cannabis worth over N3.4 billion.
Perhaps the most alarming find came on the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway, where officers stopped three young men — Bashir Usman, 20, Abubakar Nuhu, 18, and Abdulrahman Abdulwahab, 18 — at Chachi in Niger State's Tafa council area.
Tucked inside their travel bag were two locally made AK-47 rifles with a magazine, a homemade pistol, and nine rounds of ammunition.
In Gombe, two more young people, Sabi'u Umar, 27, and Hassana Muhammad, 19, were picked up at Barunde and Gombe Main Market carrying 154,480 tramadol capsules between them.
Family and domestic settings featured heavily in the week's raids. In Edo State, a workshop belonging to Matthew Ossai, 45, on Agbor Road in Benin City, was allegedly doubling as a drug storage site — officers recovered 48kg of Canadian Loud cannabis and 152g of methamphetamine from the premises.
In Lagos, Onyeka Ofor was arrested inside his own home in Aguda, Surulere, with 48,900 tramadol tablets.
One case stood out for its audacity. Innocent Ekpe, 49, was stopped along the Benin-Onitsha Expressway in Asaba, Delta State, driving a Toyota Sienna bus loaded with 292.48kg of skunk.
According to the agency, Ekpe had been posing as "Godwin Emeka," a Deputy Superintendent of Police, and carried a forged identity card to slip past checkpoints. An associate, Nduka Joseph, 39, was arrested alongside him.
The single largest seizure of the week happened far from any highway — at Tin Can Island Port in Lagos, where a 40-foot shipping container from Montreal was found to be hiding 1,200 parcels of Canadian Loud weighing 603.75kg, valued at N1.81 billion.
The container, under surveillance since its arrival on September 12, was opened five days later in a joint search with Customs officials, revealing the drugs packed into 31 jumbo bags inside two more Sienna buses.
Elsewhere, a farm in Ondo State's Ita-Ogbolu forest was raided and roughly 5,000kg of skunk destroyed on the spot, leading to the arrest of four people: Blessing Effiong, Saviour Peter, David Friday Sunday, and Ability Peter Sunday.
Along the FCT-Nasarawa corridor, Aminu Isyaku, 23, and Jamilu Habibu, 25, were caught on the Abaji-Abuja Highway transporting more than 1.1 million tramadol tablets and capsules, along with codeine syrup, methamphetamine and Exol tablets, hidden in eight sacks en route from Onitsha to Mararaba.
Smaller but no less telling seizures rounded out the week: Ifesinachi Godwin, 25, was stopped on the Owerri-Onitsha Road with 43.85kg of skunk; Luke Ugokwe was arrested in Lagos after seven cartons holding 59kg of cannabis sativa turned up at a logistics firm; and Ibrahim Hudu, 43, was picked up at Apongbo with nearly a tonne of nitrous oxide.
NDLEA Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Marwa (rtd), praised officers across the Lagos, Tin Can, Edo, Niger, Delta, Ondo, Gombe, Imo and FCT commands for their work, urging them to sustain what he called a "balanced approach" to drug control by combining enforcement with prevention.
Alongside the arrests, the agency kept up its War Against Drug Abuse (WADA) awareness drive in schools and communities, holding sensitisation lectures in Ogbomoso, Awka, Epe and Jalingo, and paying an advocacy visit to the Pere of Ogbe-Ijoh Kingdom in Warri through its Delta Ports Command.
Comments (0)
Please sign in to join the conversation.
Loading comments...