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A 74-year-old man was arrested at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja on Saturday after drug enforcement officers found eleven kilograms of cocaine concealed inside food items in his luggage as he prepared to board a British Airways flight to London, the week’s most prominent in a sequence of arrests and seizures that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency disclosed across seven states and the Federal Capital Territory in a statement on Sunday.
Ikwuakalom Nwakoro Emeka was stopped during routine departure screening at the airport’s departure hall while attempting to board flight BA082, the British Airways service to Heathrow. During a search of his luggage, blocks of cocaine weighing eleven kilograms were discovered concealed inside food items including ground dry pepper, carefully wrapped in foil papers and balloons. Emeka told officers he was travelling to London for a vacation. He has not yet entered a plea and no trial date has been set.
NDLEA Director of Media and Advocacy Femi Babafemi said in the agency’s Sunday statement that NDLEA Chairman and Chief Executive, retired Brigadier General Mohamed Buba Marwa, commended officers of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport command alongside their Lagos, Kano, and Edo counterparts for the volume of activity recorded over the preceding week. The Abuja airport seizure stands as the largest cocaine haul recorded at the capital’s airport in the current calendar year.
The concealment method employed, distributing drug parcels through food products and double-wrapping them in foil and inflated balloons before packing them among legitimate items, is among the most commonly documented techniques used by couriers attempting to pass airport security. Wrapping in foil reduces thermal signatures on basic screening equipment, while embedding contraband in food items creates multiple visual and structural layers for physical searches to penetrate. Eleven kilograms of cocaine, at current Nigerian wholesale prices, represents a consignment of considerable commercial value, sufficient, at street prices in the United Kingdom, to generate returns in the range of several hundred thousand pounds.
That Emeka is seventy-four years old is itself a notable operational dimension of the case. Law enforcement profiling of drug couriers has traditionally focused on younger individuals, and the selection of an elderly man for a high-value airport smuggling run may reflect a calculated assumption by whoever organised the operation that age would reduce scrutiny at the departure hall. The NDLEA statement identified Emeka as the suspect rather than a higher-level organiser, and made no reference to any co-accused or to the identity of whoever supplied the eleven kilograms to him in Abuja.
The Lagos operations disclosed in the same weekly report were geographically and operationally more diverse. On March 9, acting on credible intelligence, NDLEA operatives arrested Maryam Olalowo at the Ikad Hotel and Suites on Etim Inyang Street, Victoria Island, where she had been allegedly attempting to sell 89 grams of cocaine and 20 grams of Canadian Loud — a high-potency cannabis strain — while accompanied by her three children, including an infant. Olalowo told investigators the drugs belonged to her husband, Ibrahim Olalowo Olatunji, and was released following preliminary questioning. Olatunji was arrested the same day and admitted ownership of the drugs during interrogation.
Further investigation revealed he had previously been arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for a similar offence in 2015, making him a repeat offender whose prior conviction will likely influence the prosecution’s approach to sentencing if charges are filed.
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The Lagos Island operations extended into the city’s largest open drug market. On March 9, officers arrested Kalilou Simpara and Saidu Ibrahim at Ebetu Ero, where they had loaded 68,000 tramadol tablets — a mixture of 250mg and 225mg strengths — into a truck described as headed for Benin Republic. Tramadol at these dosages far exceeds clinical prescription levels and has been extensively documented in West African drug enforcement reporting as a widely abused analgesic whose diversion into illicit markets spans Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, and Niger. A follow-up operation at Idumota market on March 11 produced the arrest of Nnamdi Cyprian, identified as the consignment’s actual owner, from whose shop officers recovered an additional 1,000 tramadol tablets already prepared in a waybill package for onward dispatch. A second raid at Idumota on March 13 resulted in the arrest of Nwanosike Kelvin and the recovery of 47,500 ampoules of pentazocine injection — a synthetic opioid whose diversion to illicit markets for intravenous misuse has been a growing concern for the NDLEA across southern Nigeria.
In Kano State, Magaji Dan Azumi, 42, was arrested at Bebeji on March 10 with 386 kilograms of compressed cannabis — classified by the NDLEA under the operational term “skunk.” A separate FCT operation on March 13 produced the arrest of Isah Wako in Gwagwalada with 282.2 kilograms of the same substance. The two arrests combined represent nearly 670 kilograms of cannabis removed from distribution channels in the north-central corridor.
The Edo State operation involved the destruction of a significant cultivation site. Operatives raided the Egwa Forest Reserve in Aduan village, Orhionmwon Local Government Area, arresting Chinedo Odalonu, 33, and destroying 4,218.96 kilograms of skunk across two farms. An additional 16.5 kilograms were recovered as physical evidence. Forest reserve areas in Edo, Delta, and Cross River states have been repeatedly identified by the NDLEA as locations used for large-scale cannabis cultivation due to the combination of dense cover, limited law enforcement access, and proximity to primary road networks that facilitate onward distribution.
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The week’s largest single haul by volume was the Apapa seaport interception on Saturday, March 14. Working jointly with Nigeria Customs Service officers and other security agencies, NDLEA operatives intercepted 339,800 bottles of codeine-based syrup concealed inside two shipping containers that had been placed under surveillance following intelligence reports suggesting the presence of opioids. Codeine cough syrup has been one of the most abused pharmaceutical substances in northern Nigeria over the past decade, with illicit demand exceeding medical prescriptions by an order of magnitude in several states. Its diversion at Apapa, if not intercepted, would have fed that market through established distribution chains connecting Lagos to northern Nigeria via road and rail freight.
No charges had been confirmed against any of the suspects named in Sunday’s NDLEA statement as of the time of publication. All remain in custody pending the conclusion of investigations.
