The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested a Canada-based nurse Usman Olami and two businessmen, Ihejirika Emmanuel and Iwuagwu Victory at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos for attempting to import and export cocaine pellets and parcels of Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis through the airport.
Its Director, Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi in a statement issued Sunday said Ihejirika who frequents Thailand from where he claims to be importing fish into Nigeria was arrested on Tuesday 15th October 2024 while attempting to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Thailand via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
He said when he was taken for a body scan, the result showed he ingested illicit drugs which proved to be cocaine. As a result, he was placed under excretion observation during which he expelled five big egg size wraps of cocaine weighing 400grams.
Babafemi noted: “In his statement, the 51-year-old suspect confessed that he was to be paid upon successful delivery of the drug consignment in Thailand. He said he needed the money to boost his fish importation business.”
In the same vein, NDLEA operatives at the Lagos airport on Thursday 17th October intercepted a 26-year-old businessman Iwuagwu Ikedi Victory coming from Brazil via Addis Ababa during the inward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight.
Babafemi said his body scan revealed the ingestion of illicit drugs, adding that when he was put under observation, he excreted a pellet of cocaine weighing 22 grams.
He noted: “He however confessed that he ingested 30 wraps of the illicit drug in Brazil but excreted 29 pellets in Addis Ababa, where he handed them over to another person. The suspect revealed that he was to be paid N2.5 million for trafficking the drug.
“Meanwhile, a Nigerian Canadian nurse Usman Grace Khadijat Olami was on 4th October arrested by NDLEA officers at the Lagos airport during the inward clearance of Air France passengers from Toronto, Canada via Paris.
“During a search of her luggage, a total of 70 parcels of Canadian Loud, weighing 35.70kg were recovered from her.
“During her interview, she claimed she was in Nigeria to meet her boyfriend who instructed her to come with the large consignment of the highly sought-after synthetic cannabis.”
Babafemi said at the seaports, while a total of 162,351 bottles of codeine based syrup were intercepted from two containers at the Apapa seaport in Lagos by NDLEA operatives during a joint examination of two containers with men of the Customs Service and other security agencies on Tuesday 15th October, not less than 7.2 million pills of Royal 225mg Tapentadol and Carisoprodol worth N3.6 billion in street value were seized from a watch-listed container from India at Port Harcourt Port Complex, Onne, Rivers state on Tuesday 15th October.