Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have recorded a major breakthrough in the fight against drug trafficking with the arrest of a Brazilian national at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, and the seizure of narcotics worth billions of naira in coordinated operations across the country.
The agency said it intercepted a 30-year-old Brazilian woman, Ms Ingrid Benevides, with 30.09 kilograms of heroin cleverly concealed inside factory-sealed coffee packs.
The illicit drugs, valued at over N3bn, were discovered when she arrived in Abuja on Friday, January 23, aboard a Qatar Airways flight from Doha.
In a statement on Sunday, NDLEA spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, explained that the arrest followed weeks of intelligence-led surveillance.
A search of Benevides’ two checked-in bags revealed 21 sealed packs of Brazilian coffee, which were later found to contain heroin instead of the beverage.
According to the agency, preliminary investigations showed that the suspect, a private security officer in Brazil, claimed she brought the drugs into Nigeria under the pretext of visiting the country on holiday.
The seizure, Babafemi noted, is the largest single heroin interception ever recorded at the Abuja airport.
The NDLEA also announced that its operatives at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, intercepted two outbound passengers, Adediran Adedoyin and Afatakpa Ochuko, on January 20 while they were preparing to board a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul.
The suspects were found with 3,990 pills of tapentadol and tramadol hidden inside food items packed in their luggage.
In another operation, officers of the agency’s Marine Command, acting on credible intelligence, seized a wooden boat loaded with 44 jumbo bags of Ghana Loud cannabis weighing about 1,848 kilograms at Jakande Beach, Lekki, Lagos.
The interception took place around 1am on Thursday, January 22, shortly after the shipment reportedly arrived from Ghana.
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The anti-drug agency also recorded arrests in Kaduna State, where two suspects, Aminu Baba, 20, and Abdulrasheed Abubakar, 28, were linked to the seizure of two bags containing 140 packets of explosives along the Kaduna–Zaria highway.
The suspects were later arrested in follow-up operations in Kano and Kaduna.
Babafemi disclosed that further intelligence-driven raids across several states, including Borno, Niger, Ekiti, Edo, Kano, Oyo, Benue, Lagos, Delta and Ondo, led to the arrest of multiple suspects and the recovery of large quantities of illicit substances such as tramadol, skunk, pentazocine injections, cannabis seeds and codeine syrup.
The NDLEA said the series of arrests and seizures underscore its sustained efforts to dismantle drug trafficking networks, block cross-border smuggling routes and prevent illicit drugs from fueling crime and terrorism in Nigeria.