By Adedapo Adesanya
A 26-year-old man identified as Mr Aloysius Onyekwe has been apprehended by officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for allegedly swallowing 47 wraps of cocaine.
Mr Onyekwe, a father of a 10-month-old child, was arrested in Ibadan, Oyo State following an intelligence report shared by the Department of State Security (DSS).
The Director of Media and Advocacy at NDLEA, Mr Femi Babafemi, said in a statement on Sunday in Abuja that the desperate bid by the drug trafficker to travel by road to Algeria through Sokoto state with ingested 47 wraps of cocaine in his stomach was “frustrated” by NDLEA personnel.
He said that Mr Onyekwe, who hails from Owerri West LGA, Imo State, was arrested on Sunday, July 3 at Ojoo Park, Ibadan where he went to board a vehicle to Sokoto State and then to Algeria.
According to the NDLEA spokesperson, the suspect travelled with an 18-year-old lady, Miss Blessing Nwoke and after he was nabbed, he excreted 47 pellets of cocaine.
“He confessed that he began his journey to Algeria from Cele area of Okota, Lagos where he ingested the illicit drug, weighing 1.1kg,” he said.
Also in Oyo State, no fewer than 1,900 tablets of Tramadol 225mg were seized from a suspected drug dealer, Mr Mustapha Ijabula, 22, who hails from the Mubi area of Adamawa State.
Mr Babafemi said Mr Ijabula, who was arrested in a Yola, Adamawa-bound commercial vehicle stopped for a routine search along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
“In Akwa Ibom state, a suspected trans-border trafficker, Mr Fonkou Dassi, 31, was on Friday arrested with 6,000 tablets of Tramadol 225mg weighing 3kg by officers of Marine Unit of the agency.
“This was when a commercial boat he boarded was intercepted and searched on his way to Cameroon. The suspect concealed the recovered drugs inside Indomie noodles carton,” he said.
In the same vein, a wanted suspect, Mr Uduak Samuel, 29, was arrested on Tuesday, July 5 after attending a court proceeding where his wife was undergoing trial in another drug case.
Mr Babafemi said that the suspect had abandoned a cannabis Sativa exhibit weighing 9kg when his house was searched on June 27 and had been on the run since then.
“During his arrest, Uduak was still found in possession of a wrap of skunk,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Edo state, a serial suspect, Miss Beauty Dauda, 27, was arrested with various quantities of methamphetamine, heroin, cannabis and crack cocaine in a densely populated slum along Lagos bypass, Benin City.
Mr Babafemi said that Miss Dauda was arrested on July 6 after NDLEA operatives broke through the ring of protection often provided her by hoodlums and touts in the area.
Modupe Gbadeyanka