Men from the National Drug Control Agency arrested a returnee from Brazil, Agbasi Prosper, with 105 packets of cocaine concealed in candy at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, on Christmas Day.
The suspect was detained in MMIA arrivals hall ‘D’ during the clearance of passengers from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Doha, on Qatar Airways, on Sunday, December 25, 2022.
Agency spokesman Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, said an initial search of the suspect’s two bags turned up nothing incriminating, but NDLEA officers took another look at their duty-free nylon shopping bags that they contained packets of sweets.
Babafemi noted that a thorough examination of the bags revealed that the candy packages concealed 105 packages of cocaine weighing 2.8 kilograms and 43 grams of cannabis.
He said: “Preliminary testing carried out on a plastic bottle of body lotion also found in the suspect’s possession also tested positive for cocaine with a total weight of 472 grams. Married to a Brazilian woman with a daughter, Prosper, who claimed to be in the clothing business in Brazil, hoped to sell the drug in Enugu, his state.
“Meanwhile, three other traffickers were arrested by operatives with a total of 256 kg of illicit substances seized during interdiction operations in Kwara, Kogi and Niger states last week.
“On Monday, December 26, a team of NDLEA officers on stop and search duty along the Ilorin-Jebba highway arrested a suspect, 19-year-old Idris Saeed, with 60 blocks of compressed cannabis sativa weighing 30kg; their colleagues in Niger state in a similar operation along Jebba-Mokwa Road also recovered 240 blocks of the same substance weighing 168 kg from multicolored sacks loaded onto a Peugeot J5 bus, registration MAG 146 XA, coming from Lagos and was headed to Kano for delivery.
“In Kogi State, NDLEA officers also intercepted a truck coming from Onitsha, Anambra State, to Maiduguri, Borno, along the Okene-Abuja highway, where 9,900 pentazocine injection vials (42 kg) on Saturday, December 24.
