The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has given details of how it arrested a wanted 60-year-old drug kingpin, ending seven years it had been pursuing him.
The agency identified the role its sniffer dog played in the dramatic operation.
This is contained in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Mr Femi Babafemi.
Babafemi said that the suspect was caught while attempting to transport large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine to the South East Zone and other parts of the country.
He said that the suspect, who had been on the wanted list of NDLEA since 2019, was eventually nabbed at his hideout in Isheri area of Lagos on July 13.
This, he said, followed the interception of some of his consignments at 5:45 am on the same day at Ilasamaja on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway.
Babafemi said a team of NDLEA officers, acting on credible intelligence, had arrested one of the kingpin’s couriers.
He said the courier was heading to Onitsha, Anambra, in a white Toyota Sienna vehicle.
Babafemi said the agency’s sniffer dogs were subsequently brought in to search the vehicle.
According to him, 7.6 kg of cocaine and 900 grams of methamphetamine were found hidden in body compartments of the vehicle.
He said a follow up operation was promptly carried out at the kingpin’s hideout in Isheri.
Additional 1.8kg of cocaine and 1.3kg of methamphetamine, he said, were recovered from his residence.
Babafemi also said that NDLEA operatives in a joint operation with Aviation Security personnel of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria recovered 7,790 pills of tramadol and rohypnol.
Babafemi said the drugs, which were in the luggage of an Italy-bound passenger, were intercepted at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport on Wednesday.
He said that the suspect, who was going to Italy via Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight, claimed he purchased the drugs himself, hoping to sell them in that country at higher prices.
In another arrest at the Lagos airport, Babafemi said NDLEA operatives at the export shed on Thursday intercepted 17 parcels of skunk, a strain of cannabis.
Babafemi said that the drugs, which weighed 1.70kg, were concealed in packs of a popular cereal going to Pakistan as part of a consolidated cargo.
According to him, a suspect was arrested in connection with the incident.
In another development, Babafemi said 45,000 pills of tramadol were seized from a 30-year-old suspect on the Onitsha-Enugu expressway on Wednesday.
Babafemi added that officers of the Taraba command on the same day apprehended two suspects with illicit drugs.
He said that 10,000 caps of tramadol and a gram of cannabis were recovered from them in Gassol Local Government Area.(
