The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, (NDLEA), arrested two of the cartel’s kingpins and busted another Tramadol cartel in Lagos over the weekend by seizing millions of opioid pills and bottles worth more than N5 billion from their warehouse in the Amuwo Odofin area of the State.
On Saturday, the agency’s anti-narcotics officers also discovered and demolished a clandestine laboratory in a remote area of Sagamu, Ogun State, from which several pieces of equipment and various quantities of illegal materials used to produce the dangerous new psycho-active substance in bulk were recovered.
The NDLEA’s spokesman, Femi Babafemi, said in an issued statement yesterday, that the drug cartels were hit first on Tuesday, January 10, when hardworking agents of the Agency seized an imported shipment of Loud, a potent variety of cannabis, weighing 4, 878.72 kilograms along Awolowo road in Ikoyi, Lagos.
The statement read in part: “After a near-fatal encounter with some suspected fake security agents escorting the drugs, the NDLEA operatives succeeded in recovering the consignment with a white truck marked BDG 548 XX conveying it.
“This was followed by the seizure of 121,630 pills of pharmaceutical opioids and some quantity of Molly from a dealer, Charles Okeke on Wednesday 11th January at Idumota area of Lagos Island.
“Another effort by the Agency to bring the drug cartels to their kneels paid off on Friday 13th Jan when operatives tracked and located a major warehouse for pharmaceutical opioids at 17 Sir Ben Onyeka street, off Ago palace way in Amuwo Odofin area of the state while the owner of the store, Aloysius Okeke was arrested”.
“Illicit drugs recovered from the warehouse include: l3,264,630 pills of tramadol; 3,490 bottles of codeine and 915,000 capsules of pregabalin 300mg”, Babafemi further disclosed.
He said the massive breakthrough came on the heels of the arrest of a suspect, Olarenwaju Lawal Wahab, who distributed for the cartel the same day.
Chairman/Chief Executive of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd), while commending the officers and men of Lagos, FCT, Ondo, Enugu, Borno, Katsina, and Edo Commands for the arrests and seizures, charged them and their compatriots across the country to sustain the heat on drug cartels in Nigeria, while balancing their efforts on supply reduction with drug demand-reduction activities.
