AdminBy Ruth Chidimma Akuma
A 59-year-old businessman named Chijioke Nnanna Igbokwe has been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) after he was discovered to have ingested illicit hard drugs.
Igbokwe, who came very close to dying, was caught by NDLEA officials at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) when he arrived on an Ethiopian Airlines flight on Sunday, 26 January 2025.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAccording to Femi Babafemi, NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, a body scan showed that he had illegal drugs in his system, which led to his detention for monitoring.
Igbokwe was said to have swallowed not less than 81 pellets containing cocaine.
The NDLEA spokesperson said investigations revealed that Igbokwe, who claimed to be a cloth trader at Arena in Oshodi, Lagos, had flown from Lagos to Addis Ababa on January 22 where he swallowed the drug pellets.
He later boarded a flight to Beirut, Lebanon where he was to deliver the consignment for a fee of $3,000. However, on arrival in Beirut, he was not allowed to enter because he didn’t have the required $2,000 in cash and was sent back to Addis Ababa. In Addis Ababa, he tried to get rid of the drugs in his stomach but was unsuccessful.
He then flew back to Lagos on Saturday, 25 January, still carrying the illegal drugs in his stomach. However, NDLEA agents arrested him when he landed at the Lagos airport on 26 January.
After five days of being monitored for drug expulsion, Igbokwe was only able to excrete 24 pellets with initial medical help from the NDLEA medical center and the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in Ikeja. As time was running out and he faced more health issues, Igbokwe was taken to a tertiary medical facility where doctors performed an emergency surgery to remove the remaining 57 wraps of cocaine. His wife and brother signed the consent forms for the surgery on Thursday, 30 January.
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In total, the authorities took out 81 pellets of this Class A drug, weighing 1.943 kilograms, from his body.
2,000kg Of Ghanaian Loud At Lekki Beach
Meanwhile, NDLEA officials in Lagos seized a shipment of 2,000 kilograms of a strong cannabis strain called Ghanaian Loud at Lekki Beach on Wednesday, January 29.
The officials caught two suspects, Sunday Awoyede and Christopher Cletus, who were trying to load the illegal drugs onto a truck. Both the suspects and the truck were taken into custody along with the drugs.
In another operation on the same day, another suspect, Lawal Idris Olasunkanmi, was arrested with 55 kilograms of cannabis during a raid in the Mushin area of Lagos.
Akuma, is an intern at Prime Business Africa
