Taiwo Jimoh 
Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), at the TinCan seaport in Lagos on Friday August 23, intercepted two containers which came from Mundra port in India with no fewer than 1,596 cartons of codeine-based syrup containing 319, 200 bottles of the opioid worth two billion two hundred and thirty-four million four hundred thousand naira in street value with other port stakeholders.
Spokesperson of the Agency, Mr Femi Babafemi in a statement yesterday said, also an Onitsha, Anambra State based-businessman, Ibeanusi Solomon Nosike, was arrested and excreted 68 wraps of cocaine after 12 days of excretion observation following his arrest at the local wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos State, by personnel of the NDLEA.
Babafemi said the 36-year-old Nosike was arrested in the early hours of Thursday, August 8, at the old domestic terminal of the Lagos airport while attempting to board the first flight out of Lagos to Abuja where he was scheduled to join a Qatar Airways flight to Vietnam at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja at about 10am same day.
He said the suspect who came under NDLEA surveillance following intelligence had arrived Lagos from his base in Onitsha, Anambra State the previous day, August 7 and lodged in a hotel where he swallowed the 68 wraps of cocaine before heading to the airport for a 6:30am flight the following morning.
He was thereafter intercepted by NDLEA operatives who moved him into excretion observation where he spent the next 12 days excreting the cocaine pellets weighing 1.282 kilograms.
Meanwhile, another Vietnambound businessman, 54-year-old Paul Okwuy Mbadugha had been arrested by NDLEA operatives at the Abuja Airport on Monday, Au – gust 12, during the outward clear ance of Qatar Airways flight QR 1432 to Hanoi, Vietnam via Doha after he tested positive to ingestion of cocaine.
After four days under observation, Mbadugha egested a total of 88 wraps of the illicit drug with a gross weight of 1.710 kilograms.
However, operatives of a Special Operations Unit in NDLEA have arrested five cross-border female drug traffickers at the Seme border while on their way back to Lagos from Ghana.
Leader of the syndicate, 42-year-old Olaribigbe Bashirat Feyisara, has been under NDLEA radar before being tracked and arrested on Wednesday, August 21, along with other members of her gang: Abogun Fatimah Ladidi; Osibeluwo Tolulope Oluwaseun; Akanni Balikis Oluwatoyin and Ajetumobi Amudalat.
