…nabs 12 in raids across Kaduna, Lagos, Niger, 4 other states
Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos on New Year Day intercepted a consignment of Colorado, a very strong strain of cannabis, concealed in boxing kits imported from the United States of America.
A press release issued on Sunday by NDLEA’s Director of Media & Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, said the consignment arrived Nigeria on Monday, 1 January 2024, via Cairo on Egypt Airlines flight marked as boxing kits.
A week-long intelligence-led operation to arrest the receiver of the consignment followed, culminating in the successful tracking and arrest, on Saturday, 6 January, of 38-year-old Olorunfunmi Saheed Olakunle who distributes the dangerous psychoactive substance to dealers across Lagos State.
Saheed said he delivers such consignments to different recipients whenever his childhood friend, US-based Sagir Salami, sends them. The latest shipment has a total weight of 1.80 kilograms, NDLEA said.
Similarly, NDLEA operatives in New Year interdiction operations in Kaduna, Lagos, Niger, Kogi, Kano, Borno, and Osun States arrested 12 other suspects, including a 28-year-old female supplier of ammunition to bandits, Bilkisu Suleman.
Suleman was arrested on Wednesday, 3 January, by NDLEA officers on patrol along Zaria-Kano Expressway in possession of 249 rounds of 7.62 mm live ammunition concealed in a black nylon bag kept inside her lady’s handbag. She was on her way to deliver the ammunition to an identified bandit in Kakumi village, Katsina State, when she was nabbed. She was thereafter transferred to the Kaduna State command of the Nigeria Police Force for further investigation.
The military authorities at the Bonny Camp Cantonment in Lagos on Tuesday, 2 January, transferred a suspect, Francis Suru, 37, and 63 jumbo bags of Ghana Loud, a strain of cannabis, weighing 2,104.2 kilograms and a truck to the Lagos state command of NDLEA.
The suspect and the drug exhibits were earlier intercepted by NDLEA officers on 12 December 2023 close to the gate of the military cantonment in Bonny Camp, Victoria Island. Some armed escorts, however, resorted to sporadic shooting to obstruct the operation, a development which attracted soldiers from the cantonment, who eventually intervened and took custody of the consignment and suspect before transferring them to the agency.
In the same vein, NDLEA operatives in Niger State on Thursday, 5 January, during a stop and search operation along Suleja-Kaduna road intercepted a J5 bus coming from Ondo State to Zaria, Kaduna State, with 23 bags of cannabis sativa weighing 219.5kg. Two suspects – Umar Musa, 26, and Isachiru Abubakar – were arrested in connection with the seizure.
Furthermore, a female drug trafficker, Queen Onyema, 27, was arrested on Saturday, 6 January, in a commercial bus enroute Abuja along Okene-Lokoja Expressway with 12 compressed blocks of cannabis weighing 4.6kg and 0.046kg designer drugs concealed in an Indomie carton.
Another suspect, Mubarak Sani, 20, was nabbed at Gadar Tamburawa area of Kano on Monday, 1 January, with 445.9k kilograms of the same psychoactive substance.
In Borno, four suspects – Zanna Alhaji Dala, 32; Musa Umar, 21; Mushe Ibrahim, 23, and Shehu Idris, 19 – were arrested at Pomfomari Bye-pass area of the state with 60kg cannabis.
Also, in Osun, NDLEA operatives on patrol along Osogbo-Ode Omu Road on New Year Day intercepted a consignment of illicit drugs sent through waybill from Lagos to Osogbo. A follow-up operation led to the arrest of Ibrahim Olawale, 43. The drugs recovered include cannabis sativa 10.8kg; Loud 150grams; Colorado 19grams; and Molly 5grams, totalling 10.974kg. A digital scale, N18,000 monetary exhibit and customized wrapping papers for Colorado were also seized.
The Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd), who commended the arrests and seizures of the past week by officers and men of the MMIA, Lagos, Niger, Kogi, Kano, Borno, and Osun Commands, charged them and their compatriots across all formations of the agency to continue to remain vigilant and double their drug demand reduction as well as drug supply reduction efforts in the new year, Babafemi said.
