Two businessmen were detained by National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) agents at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Ikeja, Lagos, for allegedly trying to import and export cocaine pellets and packages containing the synthetic cannabis strain Loud through the airport.

Together with the businessmen, Iwuagwu Ikedi Victory and Ihejirika Okechukwu Emmanuel, a nurse named Usman Grace Khadijat Olami from Canada was also taken into custody.

“Ihejirika, who frequently travels to Thailand and purports to be bringing fish into Nigeria, was arrested on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, while trying to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Thailand via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,” stated NDLEA spokesman Femi Babafemi.

His body scan revealed that he had used cocaine, an illegal substance, when he was taken for one.

He was thus put under excretion watch, and during that time, he threw up five large egg-sized wraps weighing 400 grammes of cocaine.

The 51-year-old suspect acknowledged in his statement that he would get paid if the heroin shipment was successfully delivered to Thailand.

He said that he required the funds to expand his fish importing company.

Similar to this, on Thursday, October 17, NDLEA agents at the Lagos airport detained Iwuagwu Ikedi Victory, a 26-year-old businessman who was travelling from Brazil via Addis Ababa for the purpose of completing the inward passenger clearance process on an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft.

A body scan indicated that he had used illegal substances. Upon being placed under surveillance, he released a 22-gram cocaine pellet.

On the other side, he acknowledged that he had consumed thirty wraps of the illegal substance in Brazil but had passed 29 of the pellets to someone else in Addis Ababa.

The suspect disclosed that he will receive N2.5 million in payment for smuggling the narcotics.

Additionally, on October 4, when passengers from Air France were being cleared in via Paris at the Lagos airport, Nigerian-Canadian nurse Usman Grace Khadijat Olami was detained by NDLEA police.

Seventy packets weighing 35.70 kg of Canadian Loud were found on her during a check of her luggage.

She stated in the interview that she was in Nigeria to see her lover, who had given her the order to travel with a sizable shipment of the highly sought-after synthetic marijuana.

The NDLEA went on to say, “On Tuesday, October 15, at the seaports, NDLEA agents jointly examined two containers with members of the Customs Service and other security agencies, and discovered a total of 162,351 bottles of codeine-based syrup inside.

“On Tuesday, October 15, at Port Harcourt Port Complex, Onne, Rivers state, not less than seven million, two hundred thousand (7,200,000) pills of Royal 225mg Tapentadol and Carisoprodol, valued at three billion six hundred million Naira (N3,600,000,000) in street value, were seized from an Indian container that was under watch.

Seventy-eight cartons containing fifteen million six hundred thousand (15,600,000) opioid tablets were found in the same container as the chlorphenamine.

“On Tuesday, October 15, and Thursday, October 17, two further watch-listed containers that were equally checked at the port in Onne yielded 337,000 bottles of codeine-based syrup valued at Two Billion Three Hundred and Fifty-Nine Million Naira (N2,359,000,000).

“With this, the total value of the consignments of Tapentadol, Carisoprodol, and Codeine that were seized at the two seaports is now N7,095,457,000, or seven billion ninety-five million four hundred and fifty-seven thousand Naira.”

A 33-year-old suspect named Sunday Jonathan Ogenyi was apprehended in Bauchi state along the Bauchi-Jos route with 76,600 tramadol tablets hidden in fake compartments of his Toyota Sienna car bearing the license plate Enugu JRV 341 ZY.

On Tuesday, October 15, NDLEA agents in Ondo state detained three individuals: Goddey Obizuo, Samuel Aniete, and Kuffrey Aniete. The detention occurred in Afo village, where 672 kg of cannabis sativa was found on the three individuals.

10,590.36 kg of cannabis, dispersed across 4.236144 hectares of farmland, were destroyed during a raid in Illushi woodland in Esan South East LGA, Edo state.

Among the suspects detained during the operation are Sunday Nwaeboyi, 35, and Benson Upuoni, 65.

On Tuesday, October 15, NDLEA agents detained Andrew Joseph Anoriode in Lagos on the Lagos-Ibadan motorway after seizing 3 kg of methamphetamine and 1.90 kg of cannabis. A total of 241 kg of the same substance was found in Gbaji, in the Badagry region of the state.

Agbeiboh Oscar, a suspected meth cook, was apprehended at Abule Osun on Tuesday together with 265 grammes of methamphetamine and various amounts of precursor chemicals used in the production of methamphetamine and other substances.