Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, have arrested a Brazil returnee, Udechukwu Ekene Theophilus, at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, for ingesting 60 big wraps of cocaine.
The suspect who was arrested during inward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the D-Arrival Hall of the Lagos airport on Sunday 21st January, 2024, initially refused to undergo body scan, raising health concerns in a desperate bid to evade arrest.
This was according to the Director, Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi in a statement on the agency’s website.
Babafemi states that when Udechukwu was, however, offered other options, he accepted to be placed on excretion observation and shortly after he was ushered into NDLEA observatory, he excreted the first set of cocaine pellets, after which he expelled a total of 60 wraps of the class A drug weighing 1.279 kilograms in five excretions.
In his statement, Udechukwu claimed he ingested the consignment in Brazil and was to discharge everything at the airport in Addis Ababa but could only excrete 15 pellets, which he handed over to another member of his syndicate before his connecting flight to Nigeria was called.
Babafemi states that in the same vein, NDLEA operatives at the Lagos airport on Tuesday 23rd January recovered a total of 12 cartons of tramadol 225mg containing 599,900 pills weighing 385.40kg from an overstayed cargo at the SAHCO import shed of the Lagos airport after a joint examination with other agencies.
The tramadol consignment had come into the country in two batches on KLM Royal Dutch Airline flights from Karachi, Pakistan between 27th July and 1st August 2023. They were however placed under watch by NDLEA operatives since then.
