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Seizes N4.4bn worth of ‘Loud’ at Lagos ports
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The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has recorded a string of major breakthroughs across the country’s land and maritime borders in the past week, topped by the arrest of a 101-year-old great-grandmother for alleged drug dealing and the discovery of cocaine smuggled inside cassava fufu.
In a statement issued on Sunday by the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, NDLEA operatives also intercepted two containers of Thai-origin synthetic cannabis, known as “Loud”, valued at over N4.4 billion at the Apapa and Lekki ports in Lagos, marking the agency’s first-ever seizure of drugs shipped into Nigeria through a maritime route from Thailand.
In the most striking case, operatives on August 15 arrested Esther Ogunmabo, 101, at Ilisan, Ogun State, with 90 grams of skunk packaged in retail sachets.
The centenarian told operatives she turned to drug peddling after her provisions shop was destroyed by fire and that a daughter based in Lagos supplied her with the substance every four days.
NDLEA Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Marwa (rtd), ordered that she be granted bail and placed on counselling due to her age, while her daughter was arrested.
In Akwa Ibom, a joint intelligence-led operation on August 21 intercepted a wooden boat ferrying illicit drugs to fishing settlements in Cameroon.
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Three suspects were arrested, including 27-year-old Kingsley Effiong John, who was found with 20 grams of cocaine concealed inside a wrap of edible fufu alongside 435 grams of skunk. A total of 42.622kg of narcotics was recovered from the trio.
At the Lagos ports, the Thai Loud consignments were disguised behind legitimate goods.
A container at Apapa, declared to contain dry fish, rice, spare parts, soap and inverter batteries, was found to hold 1,090.5kg of Loud in 2,181 sachets, while a watchlisted container at Lekki Deep Sea Port yielded 400kg of the substance hidden beneath 798 reams of A4 paper.
Other operations during the week included the interception of 24,410 tramadol pills hidden in waybill packages inside a bus travelling from Enugu to Zuba, leading to the arrest of the consignment’s owner in Kontagora, Niger State; the destruction of 10,000kg of skunk cultivated on a four-hectare cannabis farm in Ijare Forest, Ondo State; the seizure of 1.325kg of methamphetamine and cannabis from a car intercepted along the Ogbomosho-Ilorin Expressway in Kwara State; and the arrest of a 65-year-old woman in Ibadan with a 4.68kg cocktail of Loud, tramadol, codeine syrup, diazepam and flunitrazepam.
Further raids recorded seizures in Kano, Seme (Lagos), and Abia State, the latter yielding Loud, Colorado, tramadol and rohypnol from a residence in Umuahia South.
Alongside enforcement, NDLEA commands nationwide continued sensitisation activities under its War Against Drug Abuse (WADA) campaign, engaging schools, religious institutions and community leaders in Kano, Oyo, Kebbi, Taraba, Edo and Ogun states.
Marwa commended operatives across the affected commands and urged continued commitment to what he described as the agency’s “balanced approach” to drug control.
