A 70-year-old grandma, Selifat Funke Cole and her son, Babajide Ayorinde Cole, have been arrested by the operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for drug trafficking.
According to Femi Babafemi, the spokesperson of the agency, in a statement on Sunday in Abuja, the NDLEA operatives, on Thursday, 21 December, raided a house in the Mushin area of Lagos where the 70-year-old grandma and son were arrested with 117.900kgs of cannabis sativa.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson also said the Edo State Command had arrested five persons dressed in NDLEA operational jackets with a fabricated gun and pistol carved from wood following intelligence, saying they were impersonating officers of the agency and conducting illegal operations.
The suspects include Sebastine Asekiamhe, 22; Raymond Otaru, 28; Emmanuel Wisdom, 23; Solomon Edogamhe, 27; and Bonaventure Oghibui, 22.
While some others in NDLEA jackets escaped, a bottle of codeine-based syrup was found with those arrested, adding that desperate attempts by transnational criminal organisations to flood Nigerian communities with large quantities of assorted illicit drugs during the yuletide season had been thwarted by NDLEA operatives who intercepted millions of tramadol 225mg pills, thousands of codeine syrup bottles and bags of Canadian Loud in consignments arriving the country ahead of the Christmas celebration.
“At the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja Lagos, all tricks employed by the drug syndicates to smuggle 7,500,000 pills of tramadol 225mg into the country through the NAHCO import shed of the airport were frustrated by NDLEA officers with the cooperation of men of the Nigeria Customs and other stakeholders.
“The consignment which was taken into custody on Friday came onboard Turkish airline with no country of manufacture or origin. Apart from being the first time such shipment would be seized on the airline’s flight, it was equally the first of such coming from Hamburg, Germany.
“The 7.5m tramadol 225mg pills were also specially designed and packaged as tamol-x concealed in 100 big cartons weighing 7,150kgs, which arrived the country on 11 December and placed under surveillance until last Friday. Preliminary test of the tablets proved positive to tramadol hydrochloride,” Babafemi said.
In a related development, operatives of the Lagos Command of the agency on Wednesday, December 20, conducted a search operation on two shops marked Chex Mat Global Link Limited at the Trade Fair complex in the Ojo area of Lagos, where 258 cartons of codeine-based cough syrup and eight cartons of codeine tablets were recovered.
The cartons contain 49, 200 bottles of codeine syrup and 46, 200 tablets of the same opioid, adding that a consignment of spare parts that originated from Asaba, Delta State and going to Malviya Nagar, New Delhi, India, was intercepted at the cargo terminal of the Lagos airport on Wednesday, December 20.
NDLEA sniffer dogs were deployed to examine the spare parts. The dogs were able to identify the particular shipment containing illicit drug concealment, which a physical examination later confirmed to be cocaine measuring 200 grams.
Meanwhile, not less than 70 parcels of Canadian Loud, a strong strain of cannabis with a gross weight of 35kgs, were seized by operatives of the Tincan Command of NDLEA from a container marked BEAU 4993525 coming from Toronto via Montreal, Canada.
The container contained four used vehicles, including a Honda CRV 2006 model, where bags of the psychoactive substance were concealed.