Michael Olugbode in Abuja
An attempt to use an orphan as drug mule into Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) through the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos has been thwarted by the operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA)
A statement Sunday by the spokesman of the anti-narcotics agency, Femi Babafemi, said the attempt by a human trafficker, Matthew Bassey, to export illicit drug to Dubai, UAE by planting same in the luggage of an orphan, Ms. Peter Gift Eno, recruited for a phantom job in the Arab nation has been thwarted by operatives of the agency at the Lagos airport.
He disclosed that Bassey, 29, was arrested last Wednesday following the interception of Eno at the departure hall of the Lagos airport.
When Eno’s luggage was searched, 50 parcels of cannabis (2.8 kilogrammes) concealed in food items were discovered, while there were discrepancies between the age she declared and the date of birth on her international passport.
He said when the interrogation of Eno revealed that the human trafficker, who recruited and brought her to the airport, Bassey, was still lurking around the airport, waiting for her departure, the operatives promptly tracked and arrested him.
He said investigations revealed that Eno, who is Bassey’s kinswoman, recently lost her mother and as a result made it easy for Bassey to recruit her with the promise of securing her a job in Dubai, UAE.
Babafemi said it was further discovered that the recruiter leveraged on Eno’s, who was apparently a victim, naivety and planted drugs in her bag for onward delivery to his contact in Dubai.
In a related development, the desperate bid by a drug trafficker, Aloysius Onyekwe (a.k.a Kelvin), to travel by road to Algeria through Sokoto State with ingested 47 wraps of cocaine in his stomach has been frustrated by NDLEA operatives who intercepted him in Ibadan, Oyo State following intelligence shared by the Department of State Services (DSS).
Onyekwe, 26, was arrested on Sunday, 3rd July at Ojo park, Ibadan, where he went to board a vehicle enroute Sokoto to Algeria.
He was travelling with an 18-year-old lady, Blessing Nwoke. The father of a 10-month-old child, who passed out 47 pellets of cocaine in five excretions, confessed that he began his journey to Algeria from Cele area of Okota, Lagos where he ingested the illicit drug weighing 1.1 kilogrammes.
In Oyo State, not less than 1,900 tablets of Tramadol 225mg were seized from a drug dealer, Mustapha Ijabula, 22, who was arrested in a Yola, Adamawa-bound commercial vehicle stopped for routine search along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
In Akwa Ibom State, a trans-border trafficker, Fonkou Dassi, 31, was on Friday, 8th July, arrested with 6,000 tablets of Tramadol 225mg, weighing 3kg by officers of Marine Unit of the agency when a commercial boat he boarded was intercepted and searched on his way to Cameroon. The suspect concealed the recovered drugs inside indomie noodles cartoon.
Also a wanted drug dealer, Uduak Edidiong Samuel, 29, was arrested on Tuesday, 5th July, after attending a court proceeding where his wife was undergoing trial for another drug case.
The suspect had abandoned a cannabis sativa exhibit weighing nine kilogrammes when his house was searched on 27th June and has been on the run since then.
Babafemi said during his arrest on Tuesday, Uduak was still found in possession of a wrap of skunk.
The NDLEA spokesman said in Edo State, a notorious drug dealer Beauty Dauda, 27, has been arrested with various quantities of meth, heroin, cannabis and crack cocaine in a densely populated slum along the Lagos bypass, Benin City.
She was arrested last Wednesday after NDLEA operatives were able to break through the ring of protection often provided her by hoodlums and touts in the area.
Meanwhile, the Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd), has commended the officers and men of the MMIA, Oyo, Akwa Ibom and Edo commands of the agency for staying vigilant and proactive in their areas of responsibility.
He however charged them and their colleagues across the country not to rest on their oars.
