Two Europe-based Nigerian businessmen have been arrested by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at Abuja airport after allegedly ingesting 200 wraps of cocaine weighing 3.46kg for transportation to Paris, France.
The suspects, Aliocus Godian Odife and Sam Blackborn, were arrested on Wednesday, October 28, during the outward clearance of an Air France flight, AF 832, from Abuja to Paris.
The NDLEA said both men excreted a combined total of 200 wraps of cocaine after their body scans confirmed the presence of foreign objects in their stomachs.
In a statement on Sunday, the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, said Odife, who claimed to live in France and work in a factory, arrived in Nigeria on October 21 for a short holiday.
He was arrested while attempting to board his return flight after a body scan indicated that he had ingested illicit substances.
According to Babafemi, Odife admitted to swallowing 110 pellets of cocaine. He was placed under observation and subsequently excreted all 110 wraps, which tested positive for cocaine and weighed 1.901kg.
His co-traveller, Blackborn, was also intercepted at the airport after his body scan returned a positive result for ingestion.
Babafemi said Blackborn confessed to swallowing 90 pellets of cocaine and later excreted all the wraps under observation. The recovered cocaine weighed 1.559kg.
In a separate operation in Lagos, NDLEA operatives recovered 537kg of skunk from a white Volkswagen LT 28 bus along Kudirat Abiola Way, Ikeja, on Sunday, October 25, following intelligence on the movement of the substance from the Island to the Mainland.
The same day, another team intercepted a brown J5 bus along the Gbagada-Oshodi Expressway and seized an additional 439kg of skunk.
In Oyo State, two suspects, Oguntona Nasiru, 46, and Soji Balogun, 47, were arrested on Thursday, October 29, while allegedly loading 554kg of skunk into a Volvo truck along Idere Road, Igboora.
Babafemi said the operation targeted a suspected drug dealer known as Omo Oba, who escaped arrest on October 25 when operatives seized 309.5kg of cannabis, popularly called Ghanaian Loud, allegedly linked to him.
In Kano State, operatives recovered 247,500 tablets of diazepam weighing 57.7kg and 100,000 tablets of Exol-5 weighing 38.7kg during a raid in the Tsamiya area of Gezawa on October 26.
Two days later, officers arrested Ziya’ulhaq Abdullahi, 35, and Garba Muhammed, 52, in the Dorayi area with 19,250 tablets of tramadol 225mg weighing 13.6kg.
Meanwhile, a woman, Aisha Isah, was arrested with 266 rounds of live AK-47 ammunition at a toll gate along the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway.
On the Zaria-Kano Expressway, operatives also arrested 68-year-old Ifeanyi Egwolonwu at Gwargwaje, Zaria, with
