The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has intercepted cocaine, Ludes, opioids and other illicit drugs worth about N10 billion at the Lagos ports.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, the agency’s director of media and advocacy, Mr Femi Babafemi, gave a breakdown of the seizures and the arrests that followed.
According to him, a 55-year-old businessman who trades in clothing at the popular Balogun market on Lagos Island was arrested over an attempt to export 3.30 kilograms of cocaine concealed in the walls of cartons used to package foodstuffs bound for the United Kingdom.
Babafemi said the suspect was picked up on Thursday, a day after operatives intercepted the consignment at the export shed of the Lagos airport. Three cargo agents who handled the shipment were initially arrested, leading investigators to another suspect and eventually to the syndicate’s kingpin.
“His arrest provided the lead to identifying the kingpin behind the syndicate and his eventual arrest while attempting to send another consignment of cocaine to the UK,” he said.
The agency also arrested a 31-year-old entrepreneur at her Surulere residence on Tuesday, July 21, after seizing her 2.80kg consignment of Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, which arrived from the United States aboard a United Airlines flight on Monday, July 20.
In a separate operation at the Lagos airport, operatives recovered 2.2 million pills of Tapentadol 250mg valued at over N2.2 billion from a shipment that came in from India aboard an Air Maroc flight on Friday. A consignment of tramadol buried in containers of black soap and headed to the UK was also intercepted at a Lagos courier firm on Wednesday, July 22.
At the Apapa seaport, Babafemi said a container holding three vehicles was found to conceal 4,777 sachets of Canadian Loud weighing 2,388.5kg and worth over N7.1 billion in street value, uncovered during a joint examination of the shipment on Monday, July 20.
Source: Vanguard.
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