Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have arrested a 36-year-old Nigerian based in Italy, Nwakanma Michael Uche, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA) Abuja for ingesting 95 pellets of heroin.
Nwakanma, who hails from Arodizuogu village, Ideato LGA of Imo State, was nabbed while trying to board an Air France Airline plane for Abuja-Paris-Milan-Italy route on 15th May.
The spokesman of the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, said on Sunday in Abuja that the suspect was thereafter kept under observation during which he excreted the 95 pellets of the illicit drug.
Uche claimed he came to see his parents in Nigeria after 12 years in Italy and to complete his father’s traditional marriage rites.
He also said he was to be paid N1.5m after a successful delivery of the drugs in Milan.
Meanwhile, a wanted drug kingpin behind the 2000.6kg Indian hemp seized in a concrete mixer truck in Adamawa State on December 2, 2021, Henry Chukwuneku Okamaru (aka Lawrence Ik Okamaru), has been arrested in Ondo State after five months of manhunt by NDLEA operatives.
Two suspects, Matthew Donuwe and Friday Nmborgwu were arrested in connection to the consignment last December.
Both had confessed that the concrete mixer truck, with Lagos registration number SMK 890 XB, was loaded with the illicit drug at Ogbese, Ondo State while they travelled for two months on the road before arriving Adamawa where they were arrested by NDLEA operatives.
Investigations reveal that Okamaru is one of the leaders of a hemp cultivation cartel that operates in the Ondo-Ekiti axis, and shuttled between Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta states from where he coordinated supplies of illicit consignments to the northern parts of the country and Lagos State.
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