The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has dismantled a major transnational drug trafficking operation spanning Africa, Europe and Asia, intercepting illicit drug consignments valued at more than N6.2 billion in Lagos and arresting a suspected cross-border drug kingpin alongside several other traffickers.
The operations exposed the increasingly sophisticated methods being deployed by international drug syndicates to move illicit substances into Nigeria, including the concealment of 47,200 tablets of captagon, popularly referred to as the “Jihadi drug,” inside blocks of bathing soap imported from Ghana.
The captagon consignment, estimated to be worth over N1.5 billion, was intercepted at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos, following the arrest of a 49-year-old suspect, Akinbile Kazeem Aikins.
Aikins was arrested after arriving from Accra, Ghana, aboard an African World Airlines flight, according to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.
The spokesman of the agency, Femi Babafemi, disclosed in a statement on Sunday that the captagon seizure was part of a much larger haul intercepted at the airport.
NDLEA operatives also recovered 3,900,030 tablets of Tramaking 225mg and Tapentadol 250mg from four abandoned consignments at the airport.
The opioid tablets, with a combined weight of 2,787.40 kilogrammes, have an estimated street value of more than N4.6 billion.
Babafemi said three of the consignments contained 900,000 tablets of Tramaking and were shipped from Bangladesh through RwandAir, while another consignment containing more than three million tablets of Tapentadol arrived from Amsterdam aboard Qatar Airways.
The agency said the scale and geographical spread of the seizures underscored the operations of a sophisticated transnational trafficking network exploiting international aviation routes and commercial cargo channels to move dangerous pharmaceutical opioids and illicit stimulants into Nigeria.
The development came amid a series of intensified operations by the NDLEA across several states, which resulted in the seizure of cocaine, heroin, Colorado, cannabis and hundreds of thousands of assorted opioid pills.
In Rivers State, NDLEA operatives reportedly cracked open a fireproof iron safe recovered from a notorious drug den in Port Harcourt, where they discovered 316 grammes of cocaine, 10 grammes of heroin and 237 grammes of Colorado concealed inside.
In Ondo State, five suspects were arrested in separate operations that led to the recovery of a combined 1,069 kilogrammes of skunk.
Similarly, operatives in Delta State recovered more than 176,000 assorted opioid pills during their operations.
The latest seizures highlight the enormous volume of illicit drugs being trafficked through Nigeria, as well as the increasingly inventive concealment methods and complex international routes being deployed by drug syndicates.
The NDLEA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Brig.-Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd.), commended officers involved in the operations and directed personnel across the country to sustain the offensive against drug trafficking networks.
He also charged operatives to remain vigilant against criminal syndicates adopting unconventional concealment techniques, including the use of everyday household items such as bathing soap to smuggle illicit drug consignments.
The interception of millions of opioid tablets alongside captagon, cocaine, heroin and large quantities of cannabis within the same period, the agency said, underscores the scale, sophistication and growing international dimension of the drug trafficking challenge confronting Nigeria.
