The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, has smashed a cocaine trafficking cartel led by a couple, Lookman Dauda and Olayinka Toheebat Dauda, and recovered multi-billion-naira worth of illicit drugs.
A statement by the agency’s Director, Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi on Tuesday in Abuja, said the seizures were made in two major operations following the arrest of the suspects in one of the intelligence-led raids.
He said that the duo were arrested on Saturday, May 25, by operatives of a special operations unit in NDLEA.
According to him, the interdiction was with the support of the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States.
Babafemi said that the suspects were arrested at Ibiye, a community near Badagry, while attempting to cross the land border to deliver the consignment in Ghana.
He said that at the point of their arrest, 42 blocks of the Class A drug weighing 47.5 kilograms were found on them.
“A swift follow up operation in their residence at Plot 24/25 OPIC Extension, Petedo road, Agbara, Ogun, led to the recovery of additional eight blocks of the same drug weighing 10kg.
“This brought the total weight of the cocaine seized from the couple to 57.5 kilograms.”
In a separate raid by the special operations unit, no fewer than 1,100 ampoules of lethal synthetic opioid, fentanyl, weighing 6.48kg were recovered.
The NDLEA spokesman said that the drugs were recovered from a member of a drug trafficking syndicate, 34-year-old Ikeh Stanley Ifeanyi at the popular Idumota market in Lagos Island.
Also, no less than 790 ampoules of the dangerous opioid, weighing 5.273kg were equally seized from another member of the fentanyl syndicate, 48-year-old Chieze Ogechukwu Benjamin, at Idumota market.
“Fentanyl, a lethal synthetic opioid, which is 100 times more potent than heroin is currently responsible for over 70 per cent overdose deaths as well as a major contributor to fatal and nonfatal overdoses in the US,” he said.