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Two Nigeria-based residents of Milan were arrested at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos within 48 hours of each other last week as they attempted to board separate Italy-bound flights with combined opioid consignments of more than 31,000 pills, NDLEA’s Media and Advocacy Director Femi Babafemi confirmed Sunday, disclosing a pattern of trafficking that enforcement officials said pointed to an organized supply chain between Nigeria and Italy’s Nigerian diaspora community.
Christian Agbonhese, 38, a Milan resident, was arrested at the departure hall of MMIA on March 18 as he prepared to board a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Milan. A search of his luggage revealed 23,150 pills of tramadol 225mg, 4,000 tablets of tapentadol 250mg, and 1,320 pills of tramadol 100mg, all concealed inside two large winter jackets, for a combined total of 28,470 opioid pills. Two days later, on March 20, Friday Ehianuka, 37, also a Milan resident, was intercepted at the same airport attempting to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Rome. NDLEA operatives found 2,698 pills of tramadol 225mg concealed inside containers of skin-lightening body cream packed in his luggage. During interrogation, Ehianuka confirmed he was to be paid a negotiated fee in Euros if the consignment had been successfully delivered in Italy.
The combination of two Italy-bound consignments within two days, both carried by Nigerian nationals resident in Milan, is consistent with a courier-based supply model in which Nigerian drug trafficking networks use the same recruitment and concealment techniques that have been documented in the heroin and cocaine trade adapted for pharmaceutical opioids. Tramadol, which is a Schedule V controlled substance in Italy and a prescription-only drug in most European Union countries, commands prices in European illicit markets that are multiples of its cost in Nigerian pharmacy-equivalent wholesale markets. Tapentadol, a more potent synthetic opioid not widely known in Nigerian public health discourse, is even more tightly restricted in the EU. The two couriers collectively carried enough pills to generate several hundred thousand euros in value at street prices.
The airport operations were part of a broader week of enforcement that also included a midsection operation at a Lagos courier facility and a methamphetamine interdiction at the same hub. On March 16, officers at a Lagos courier firm intercepted two parcels of Loud — a high-potency cannabis strain — weighing one kilogram, shipped to Lagos from the United States, alongside a separate attempt to export 158 grams of methamphetamine concealed inside the walls of a cardboard carton bound for New Zealand.
The New Zealand-bound meth consignment reflected a trafficking direction that NDLEA has flagged in previous reports as a growing concern, with Pacific-route shipments becoming more frequent as law enforcement pressure on the Europe-Nigeria corridor has intensified.
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In Lagos, a codeine enforcement operation on the same day produced two separate seizures at different points in the supply chain. Operatives raided a store at Otto in the Ijora area and recovered 21,737 bottles of codeine-based syrup. A separate operation on the Third Mainland Bridge on the same date resulted in the arrest of Chidiebere Anigbogu and Paul Nwagbara, who were intercepted while transporting 8,380 bottles of the same substance. Combined, the two operations removed approximately 30,117 bottles of codeine syrup from the Lagos distribution chain in a single day — a haul that follows the 339,800-bottle Apapa seaport seizure from the week before.
The week’s most numerically significant seizure by pill count occurred not at an airport or a seaport but on a highway in the north. NDLEA operatives recovered 586,000 pills of tramadol and Exol-5 from Lawal Anas, 28, along the Kaduna-Zaria highway in Kaduna State on March 17. At the same location three days later, on March 20, Musa Shuaibu, 22, was arrested with an additional 7,290 tablets of tramadol 225mg.
The total from that single road corridor across four days exceeded 593,000 pills — a volume that indicates the highway serves as an active transit route for pharmaceutical contraband moving between northwestern Nigeria and distribution networks in the south. Also in the FCT, a commercial bus was searched on the Gwagwalada Expressway on March 18 and found to contain 91,840 tramadol pills concealed in the vehicle’s body compartments. The driver, Aminu Ali, 27, was arrested.
In Kano State, two suspects were apprehended on March 18 in separate locations: Abdulkadir Mamuda, 35, with 102.5 kilograms of cannabis at Dan-Tsalle, and Uche Johnson Festus, 47, with 95.5 kilograms of the same substance at Naibawa Gabas. In Edo State, 97.5 kilograms of cannabis were recovered from the home of Akeem Idde, 37, in Ojah, Akoko-Edo Local Government Area on March 16. In Oyo State, Bankole Bari was arrested at Oke-Oyan in Ibarapa Local Government Area on March 17 with 71.2 kilograms of cannabis that he had smuggled into Nigeria from Benin Republic through the Oyan River.
In Taraba State, NDLEA operatives acting on credible intelligence intercepted Aliyu Adamu, 26, along the Takum-Jalingo highway on March 17 while he was transporting 77,660 tramadol capsules bound for Gombe. In Adamawa State, a consignment of 82.8 kilograms of tramadol concealed in a truck in Yola led to the arrest of six suspects on the same date. Those arrested as joint owners of the consignment were Ramatu Aliyu, Jungudo Abdullahi, Najid Abdullahi, Musa Mohammed, Usman Abdulrahim, and a second Musa Mohammed.
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Beyond enforcement operations, NDLEA commands held War Against Drug Abuse sensitization sessions in schools, workplaces, churches, and mosques across Ebonyi, Lagos, Cross River, Enugu, and Ogun states during the week. NDLEA Chairman Retired Brigadier General Mohamed Buba Marwa commended officers of the MMIA, DOGI, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Edo, Oyo, FCT, Taraba, and Adamawa commands and directed them to maintain the agency’s integrated approach combining enforcement with community demand-reduction programming.
None of the suspects named in Babafemi’s statement have been formally charged as of Sunday. All remain in custody pending the completion of investigations.
