By Amofokhai Williams
Nigeria’s war on drugs took a dramatic turn last week as operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA pulled off a series of high-stakes raids across the country, unmasking traffickers and destroying massive drug plantations.
At the centre of the storm was a 50-year-old widow, Mrs. Ifeoma Henrietta Ezewuike, who stunned operatives when she attempted to traffic 1.3kg of cocaine disguised under a fake pregnancy.
A statement issued by NDLEA‘s spokesman, Femi Babafemi on Sunday, said the fashion designer and mother of one, arrested at Jibowu, Lagos, had concealed the drugs in a bid to ferry them to Abuja.
He said a raid on her Ago Palace home uncovered cutting agents, with the widow confessing that she “inherited” the illicit trade from her late husband.
But the widow’s arrest was only the beginning. In Lagos, 90 parcels of Loud cannabis (48.6kg) smuggled from the United States were intercepted in cartons of kitchen sinks.
In Adamawa, a notorious dealer escaped by scaling a fence, but his ally was caught with nearly 355,000 tramadol pills.
In Kano, seizures ran into hundreds of thousands of opioid capsules and bottles of codeine syrup, while in Kogi, smugglers were caught ferrying opioids across the River Niger.
The agency also struck at the heart of cannabis cartels, wiping out plantations and warehouses across the South.
In Delta, Ondo, Edo and Taraba, a staggering 75,544kg of skunk was either destroyed or seized. In Kwara and Ekiti, trucks loaded with tonnes of cannabis were intercepted, and multiple suspects fell into NDLEA dragnet.
Even dispatch riders were not spared, as operatives in Abuja nabbed two motorcyclists delivering injections and skunk to customers around the FCT.
NDLEA Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd), hailed the operatives for their “dexterity and balance,” urging them to sustain the nationwide crackdown.
