Cocaine deals: Saudi-bound Bilkisu captured in Kano, while 67-year-old apprehended at the Abuja airport

Chukwuemeka Clement, 67, was detained by agents of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, for allegedly eating 100 wraps of cocaine.

The suspect, according to the NDLEA, said that he entered into the criminal enterprise in order to acquire enough money to wed a new bride and begin anew after squandering thirty years in Brazil, Ethiopia, and Thailand.

“Chukwuemeka was detained on Tuesday, October 3rd, while undergoing bod inspection on Ethiopian Airlines flight 951 from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.””In his testimony, he claimed to have lived in Brazil, Ethiopia, and Thailand for 30 years. He had previously been married, but his wife had passed away, and he was childless. He further stated that this was the reason he chose to engage in drug trafficking in order to acquire the funds necessary to wed a new wife and begin anew, according to a statement released on Sunday by NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi.

A 45-year-old lady named Bilkisu Mohammed Bello was detained by NDLEA agents at the Malam Aminu Kano International Airport (MAKIA), Kano, on the same day, Tuesday, October 3. She was getting ready to board a Saudia Airlines flight to Saudi Arabia.

She admitted during an interview that cocaine pellets supplied to her to ingest before her flight were stored in a home in Kano’s Farawa neighbourhood. 52 wraps totaling 767 grammes of the illegal material were found at the residence after she guided NDLEA agents there.
In the meantime, NDLEA agents stormed James town in Ogunmakin, Obafemi Owode local government area of Ogun state on Tuesday, October 3, supported by officers and soldiers of the Nigerian Army, Civil Defence Corps, and Amotekun personnel. There, they discovered and destroyed 10.38 tonnes of cannabis sativa covering over 4.152 hectares.

READ ALSO: NDLEA apprehends Lagos drug boss as mule about to ingest 93 cocaine wraps

On their way back from the operation, the squad also stopped a truck with the licence plate FS548XN that was pulling a 40-foot container filled with wood logs. Two packets of cannabis sativa weighing 20 kg were found after the container was searched, and six suspects in the truck—Ahmed Yusuf, Olaniyi Babatunde, Adedeji Babatunde, Richard John, Osolale Olamilekan, and Abdulazeez Saied—were taken into custody.

In a same vein, on October 1st, agents carried out a raid on the Obi camp in the Owan West LGA of Edo State, removing 30 sacks of skunk totaling 300kg and hidden in charcoal from a dilapidated old mud hut. Similar to this, two marijuana fields spanning 1.179065 hectares were discovered and destroyed on Friday, October 6, in the Orhiomwon local government region of the state. Tersoo Zaria, 28, Ifeanyi Osai, 53, Moses David, 19, and Daniel Gabriel, 20, were all detained as suspects.

Auwal Bindow, a suspect in Gombe state, was detained on Friday, 6 October, along the Bauchi-Gombe road with 50,000 tramadol capsules, while Anuoluwapo Blessing Iyanu, 32, was apprehended on Wednesday, 4 October, by NDLEA agents on patrol along the Lagos-Ibadan motorway with 52 blocks of compressed pawpaw-shaped cannabis sativa weighing 30kg.

The War Against Drug Abuse, or WADA, advocacy campaign was resumed last week by the various commands of the Agency all throughout the nation with the same fervour. Some of them are the LGA WADA sensitization lecture for students of Beth-Root Model Secondary School, Onitsha, Anambra state, the WADA sensitization lecture at Igbonnibi High School, Ila Orangun, Osun state, the WADA sensitization lecture at Royal Ambassador Secondary School, Makurdi, Benue state, the WADA sensitization lecture at Ilora Baptist Grammar School, Ilora, Oyo state, and others.

While praising the officers and personnel of the NAIA, MAKIA, Ogun, Oyo, Edo, and Gombe Commands of the Agency for their outstanding achievements over the past week, the statement a stated that Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd), Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, “equally applauded their counterparts in all the commands across the country for intensifying their WADA advocacy lectures thus creating a fair balanceHis stomach contained many pellets, according to a scan. He passed four excretions totaling 100 wraps of cocaine weighing 2.195 kilogrammes while being watched.