The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has intercepted a 30-year-old Brazilian woman at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for attempting to smuggle 30.09 kilograms of white heroin with an estimated street value of over N3 billion into Nigeria. With the illicit drugs concealed in factory-sealed coffee packs, according to a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Mr Femi Babafemi, who said the suspect, a private security officer in Brazil, was arrested on Friday, January 23, upon her arrival aboard a Qatar Airways flight QR1431 following processed intelligence. Adding that a search of her two checked bags revealed 21 sealed packets of Brazilian coffee which, when opened, were found to contain white substances that tested positive for heroin, marking the single largest heroin seizure ever recorded at the Abuja airport, as the suspect claimed during preliminary investigation that she brought the consignment “under the guise of coming to Nigeria for holidays.”
In related operations, NDLEA operatives at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, intercepted two passengers on Tuesday, January 20, en route to Istanbul, Turkey, with 3,990 pills of tapentadol 250mg and tramadol 225mg concealed in food items, and officers of the Marine Command seized a wooden boat conveying 44 jumbo bags of Ghana Loud cannabis weighing 1,848 kilograms at Jakande Beach in Lekki, Lagos, shortly after its arrival from Ghana. As further intelligence-led operations led to the interception of two bags containing 140 packets of explosives along the Kaduna–Zaria highway, the arrest of multiple suspects in Kano and Kaduna, the recovery of 120 kilograms of skunk in Zaria, and the continuation of the agency’s nationwide War Against Drug Abuse (WADA) sensitisation campaigns across schools and communities.