An attempt by a 29-year-old South African, Erasmus Jean Pierre, to export 2.6 kilograms of methamphetamine concealed in his luggage to the Middle East through the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, NAIA Abuja, on August 23, 2023, was thwarted by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, who arrested him and recovered the illicit drug.
The suspect was intercepted by NDLEA operatives during the outward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 404 from Abuja to the Middle East via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A thorough search of his luggage led to the discovery of the whitish, powdery illicit substance factory packed in different parts of the bag.
Preliminary investigation reveals that the suspect arrived in Lagos through Abidjan, Côte dIvoire, on Saturday, August 19th, came to Abuja on Tuesday, August 22nd, and took possession of the brown bag containing the drug consignment on Wednesday, August 23rd, before heading to the Abuja airport for his flight out of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, NDLEA officers in Gombe state on patrol along Darazo Road on Monday, August 21, recovered an abandoned Volkswagen Sharon vehicle marked GME 76 XD containing a total of 373,420 pills of opioids, including tramadol and diazepam. In the same vein, operatives in Ogun State raided the home of a drug dealer, Ifeanyi Orji, on Wednesday, August 23, in the Ibafo area of the state, where 81,000 tablets of tramadol 225mg weighing 32.4 kg were recovered.
In Adamawa state, NDLEA operatives on Tuesday, August 22, recovered 60,000 pills of tramadol from a suspect, Ibrahim Abba, 25, who was traveling in a commercial Toyota Starlet car from Kalaa village to Mubi. Equally, in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, operatives intercepted two consignments of skunk with a gross weight of 1,242.1 kilograms. The first consignment of 665.1 kg was seized from a truck around Area 3 on Sunday, August 20th, while the second one, weighing 577 kg, was recovered during a stop and search operation along the Lokoja-Abaji expressway the same day. The consignment was concealed in Jumia goods delivery packs inside a container Mercedes truck, whose driver, Yusuf Yakubu Asokomhe, and his assistant, Tunde Ogundare, were arrested.
In Kwara state, operatives on patrol along the Jebba-MMinna road on Tuesday, August 22, intercepted a commercial truck conveying goods from Lagos to Katsina with 37.5 kg of cannabis sativa hidden among other items. The driver, Abdulazeez Usman, and his assistant, Halidu Musa, were arrested for further investigation. Similarly, In Yobe state, NDLEA operatives intercepted an ash-colored Sharon Galaxy vehicle marked AKK 484 XA along the Potiskum-Gombe road on Wednesday, August 23, coming from Baissa, Kurmi local government area of Taraba state. Three suspects in the vehicle—Ya’u Yahuza, 30; Yahaya Muhd, 29; and Tanimu Salisu, 20—were arrested with 133 blocks of cannabis sativa weighing 62 kg.
Operatives in Edo on Thursday, August 24, stormed the Uzebba forest in the Owan West local government area of the state, where they arrested Esazobor Ohioze, 33, with 54.3 kg of cannabis recovered from a hut, while a total of 2.995696 hectares of cannabis farms were destroyed.
Efforts by transnational drug cartels to move a consignment of 117 grams of ketamine neatly concealed in a pair of leather male slippers being shipped to Indonesia and 2.14 kilograms of skunk clinically hidden in the walls of a local wooden drum were equally frustrated by NDLEA operatives of the Directorate of Operations and General Investigation, DOGI, attached to courier firms in Lagos.
Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd), while commending the efforts of the officers and men of the NAIA, Gombe, Ogun, Adamawa, FCT, Kwara, Yobe, and Edo Commands, as well as those of DOGI, for a job well done in the past week, charged them and their colleagues across the country to intensify their drug supply reduction operations and equally balance that with drug demand reduction activities.
