The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, has seized a consignment of cocaine and heroin worth over N30billion at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos.
One of the seizures, 26.840 kilograms of cocaine, is the biggest single seizure from an individual in the past 15 years.
An official of the agency who spoke on condition of anonymity explained:
“On January 27, 2021, at about 1320hours, during the inward clearance of Ethiopian Airline passengers at the E-arrival hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, a female passenger, by name Onyejegbu Ifesinachi Jennifer, 33 years, who arrived Nigeria from Sao Paulo, Brazil via Addis Ababa, was intercepted by NDLEA operatives.
As a standard operating procedure, all passengers to and from high risk countries are always profiled, using passengers’ manifest. It happened that the above-named suspect was targeted. Consequently, she was taken to NDLEA office at the Airport, where her bags were searched thoroughly, and in the process, whitish powdery substances were found concealed inside 16 pieces of duvet contained in her two travel bags.
Field test was conducted on the recovered substances and proved to be Cocaine and weighed 26.850kilogrammes. The suspect, who is a hair stylist and based in Brazil, was interviewed and she confessed to having agreed to smuggle the hard drug for the sum of N2m. Although she refused to disclose the names of her associates, she, however, said she was asked to hand over the drugs to another person. The street value of this singular seizure is put at over N21b.”
The official further disclosed that the development came on the heels of a similar one recorded on January 25, 2021, when red luggage was declared to the NDLEA operatives as a left-over at the E- arrival hall, after the inward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian airline.
He recounted that after field test, the three suspects who were arrested in this case were caught with cocaine weighed to be 8.400 kilogrammes, with a street value of over N7 billion.
