Two Nigerians living in Europe have been arrested at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, after allegedly swallowing 200 wraps of cocaine weighing 3.46kg for attempted smuggling to France.
The suspects, identified as Aliocus Godian Odife and Sam Blackborn, were intercepted on October 28 during the outward clearance of an Air France flight, AF 832, to Paris.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said the men had returned to Nigeria for holidays before attempting to travel back to Europe with the drugs concealed in their stomachs.
NDLEA spokesman, Femi Babafemi, said body scans conducted on the suspects confirmed the presence of foreign objects in their stomachs.
Odife, who reportedly lives in France and works in a factory, arrived in Nigeria on October 21. He allegedly confessed to swallowing 110 wraps of cocaine weighing 1.901kg, which he later excreted under observation.
His co-traveller, Blackborn, was also found to have ingested 90 wraps weighing 1.559kg. The agency said he excreted all the wraps while under observation.
NDLEA Chairman, Brig-Gen Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd.), warned Nigerians living abroad against using their overseas residence as cover for drug trafficking.
“The interception of the two cocaine couriers at Abuja airport is a fresh warning to those who think they can use their residence abroad as cover to traffic drugs across Nigerian borders,” he said.
In other operations, the agency recovered 976kg of cannabis from two commercial buses in Lagos.
In Oyo State, operatives arrested two men, Oguntona Nasiru, 46, and Soji Balogun, 47, while they were allegedly loading 554kg of cannabis into a truck along Idere Road, Igboora, on October 29.
In Kano, officers recovered 247,500 tablets of diazepam weighing 57.7kg and 100,000 tablets of Exol-5 weighing 38.7kg during a raid in the Tsamiya area of Gezawa. Two other suspects were arrested in Dorayi with 19,250 tramadol pills.
The agency also said its operatives arrested a woman, Aisha Isah, with 266 rounds of live AK-47 ammunition during a patrol along the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway.
On the Zaria-Kano Expressway, a 68-year-old man, Ifeanyi Egwolonwu, was arrested with 2,770 ampoules of pentazocine injection, 100 ampoules of diazepam injection, 11,000 diazepam tablets and 4,500 Exol-5 tablets.
Marwa commended officers involved in the operations and urged them to sustain efforts against drug trafficking.
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