NDLEA intercepts suspected bandits’ supplier

Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have arrested a 32-year-old woman, Ubaida Aliyu, who was found to be in possession of 573 rounds of live ammunition.

The spokesman of the agency, Femi Babafemi, on Sunday in a statement, said the suspect was arrested in Kaduna State on the Kaduna-Zaria highway on Saturday.

He said that the suspect confessed that she was on her way to deliver the ammunition to bandits in Sokoto State.

Also, a Spain-based businessman, 50-year-old Francis Akajiobi, was arrested at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos, after parcels of cocaine weighing 1.20kg were discovered in his pair of sandals while attempting to board a Royal Air Maroc flight to Madrid, Spain.

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Babafemi said, “The two parcels of cocaine were concealed in the soles of a pair of black sandals Akajiobi was wearing to board his flight when NDLEA operatives intercepted him on Thursday, 25th July, 2024.

“During his preliminary interview, he claimed the consignment was delivered to him at a bar in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and that he was to deliver it to his friend and neighbour in Spain for a fee of €5,000 upon successful delivery to the recipient.”

In the same vein, Babafemi said that a suspect, Makinde Sodiq Lekan, was arrested in connection with the seizure of 99 parcels of Canadian Loud (hemp) weighing 51.60kg at the Lagos airport on a Turkish Airlines flight from Canada.

He further said that operatives targeting syndicates that specialise in shipping large quantities of opioids into neighbouring countries from where they smuggled them into Nigeria in small quantities through transport companies arrested one of the kingpins, Chukwuemaka Obodozie, in the early hours of Sunday, July  21, at the Cele Bus Stop on the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, Lagos, with 100,000 tablets of tramadol loaded in two bags shortly after his arrival from Ghana via one of the transport companies plying the Lagos-Ghana route.