In a series of intense crackdowns, operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have dismantled desperate attempts by drug trafficking syndicates to flood international markets with illicit substances.

From cocaine and tramadol to Loud and Molly, traffickers resorted to extreme measures—hiding the contraband in prayer beads, board games, and even female clothing—hoping to smuggle them into the United States, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Poland, and the United Arab Emirates. But their carefully orchestrated plots met a brutal end.

NDLEA’s spokesman, Femi Babafemi in a statement on Sunday said the relentless vigilance of officers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos, led to the arrest of a key suspect, 43-year-old businesswoman Jakpor Egware May, who was intercepted at the Gate ‘C’ departure hall while attempting to board an Air France flight to Italy on Saturday, 8th March 2025.

He said a thorough search of her luggage exposed 190 parcels of tramadol 225mg and a hidden stash of skunk (a potent cannabis strain) and that under intense interrogation, she confessed to purchasing the drugs herself, intending to resell them in Italy—a scheme now permanently derailed.

Meanwhile, at the Lagos airport’s export shed, another trafficker, 60-year-old Yahaya Fatai Ayinla, walked straight into NDLEA’s dragnet on Tuesday, 11th March.

His plan? Smuggle 400 grams of skunk, cunningly concealed in clothing, to New York, USA. His fate? Sealed in handcuffs.

Babafemi disclosed further that elsewhere in Lagos, traffickers took their deception to chilling new heights.

At logistics firms, he said operatives of the Directorate of Operations and General Investigation (DOGI) uncovered a sinister plot to ship over two kilogrammes of Loud, Molly, and Tramadol (365mg and 225mg), hidden in Vitamin C bottles and female apparel, to the US.

But NDLEA officers struck first. The crackdown didn’t stop there—between Monday, 10th and Wednesday, 12th March, they intercepted shipments of 230 grams of cocaine cleverly stashed inside prayer beads, shoe soles, and board game packs, all destined for Saudi Arabia, Poland, and the UAE.

The heat was equally fierce in the northern region. In Kano, NDLEA operatives pounced on 40-year-old Hassan Haruna at Chalawa, seizing a massive 479kg haul of compressed skunk packed into 727 blocks on Wednesday, 12th March.

Meanwhile, in Kogi, officers intercepted a staggering 58,300 tramadol pills along the Kabba-Obajana highway in a commercial bus heading to Abuja on Tuesday, 11th March—yet another deadly cargo stopped in its tracks.

From Lagos to Kano, from airports to highways, NDLEA’s crackdown is dealing a crushing blow to drug cartels, proving once again that no disguise, no deception, and no desperate scheme can outrun the long arm of the law.


https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2025/03/16/ndlea-unleashes-terror-on-drug-barons-seizes-deadly-shipments-enroute-u-s-others/