The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has arrested a 38 year old South African woman at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja for allegedly attempting to smuggle 5.75 kilogrammes of heroin into Nigeria while travelling with her three year old son, whom investigators say she used as cover to avoid suspicion, while separately seizing 4,143.5 kilogrammes of a potent cannabis strain worth more than N10.3 billion at the Apapa Seaport in Lagos and intercepting a drug courier who excreted 100 wraps of methamphetamine after arriving at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport.
NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi said the South African suspect, identified as Jessica Ann Will, was arrested July 6 while passengers were being cleared from Qatar Airways flight QR1433 from Doha, having initially denied travelling with any checked luggage before investigators discovered two suitcases containing 14 large blocks of heroin bearing baggage tags matching her passport, at which point she admitted ownership, claiming she had forgotten she checked the bags in. Preliminary investigation suggests she travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja and is believed to be part of a transnational trafficking syndicate allegedly run alongside her husband or partner, Jan Coenraad De Jager, along the Cambodia to South Africa route.
In a separate operation, NDLEA officers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport arrested 48 year old Onyechere Chinadu, a Lagos Okada rider, upon his arrival from Madagascar via Addis Ababa on June 28, recovering 87 wraps of methamphetamine hidden inside clothes in his backpack during a search. Chinadu told investigators he had worked as a commercial motorcycle rider in Lagos for 15 years before a Uganda based associate recruited him into trafficking, claiming he ingested additional drug pellets in Uganda before travelling to Madagascar, where immigration authorities denied him entry, prompting his sponsor to reroute him to Lagos, where he was arrested. Unable to state exactly how many pellets he had swallowed, NDLEA placed him under observation, and over the following three days he excreted 13 additional pellets, bringing the total recovery to 100 wraps of methamphetamine weighing 1.715 kilogrammes.
At Apapa Seaport, NDLEA operatives working alongside the Nigeria Customs Service and other agencies uncovered 8,287 nylon bags of the potent cannabis strain, weighing 4,143.5 kilogrammes, inside a container imported from Canada, a seizure that followed weeks of intelligence led surveillance by the agency’s Maritime Intelligence Unit, which tracked the shipment from Montreal before it reached Lagos, putting its estimated street value above N10.3 billion. In a separate operation, NDLEA said it thwarted an attempt to export 2.5 kilogrammes of skunk concealed inside a gas compressor bound for Cyprus through a Lagos courier company.
Babafemi said the agency continues its War Against Drug Abuse campaign nationwide, running sensitisation programmes in schools and communities across Ebonyi, Kano, Ekiti and Ogun states, while its Zone 14 Command paid an advocacy visit to Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara. NDLEA Chairman Buba Marwa commended the officers behind the various operations, praising the agency’s continued success in reducing the supply of illicit drugs while intensifying public awareness campaigns, and urged personnel nationwide to remain steadfast in the fight against trafficking and abuse.
