Barely one week after operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) nabbed a pregnant woman over possession of hard drugs, a 30-year-old pregnant drug dealer has been arrested in Delta State.
Spokesperson of the agency, Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, December 11, said a raid operation in Abbi town, Ndokwa West Local Government Area of the state led to the arrest of Aniekem Evelyn, with 1,161kgs of cannabis recovered from her warehouse.
In Kebbi state, two suspects: Austine Julius and Sale Yakubu were arrested on Sunday 4th December along Yawuri-Kebbi road in a loaded Dyna Truck with 117 bags of Cannabis Sativa weighing 1,070 kilograms concealed under bags of oranges.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that NDLEA is a federal law enforcement agency in Nigeria under the Federal Ministry of Justice charged with eliminating the growing, processing, manufacturing, selling, exporting, and trafficking of hard drugs. The agency was established by Decree Number 48 of 1989.
NDLEA is present in international airports, seaports, and border crossings and also targets the leaders of narcotics and money laundering organizations.
Drug trafficking
The United States donated full body scanning machines for the Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt international airports and provided security training and orientation to airport officers.
The machines have proved effective in catching smugglers and couriers taking cocaine from Latin America to Europe by way of Nigeria. Between 2006 and June 2008 over 12,663 suspected drug dealers were arrested, with the seizure of over 418.8 metric tonnes of various hard drugs.
Recall that in July 2009, a woman about to board a KLM flight at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport was arrested by NDLEA officers and later excreted 42 wraps of cocaine, weighing 585 grams. In September 2009, the NDLEA arrested a Guinean woman en route from Brazil to Europe with 6.350 kg of pure cocaine at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.
In 2008 Nigeria was certified by the United States in the anti-narcotic crusade for the eight successive time. President George Bush said that Nigeria had made significant progress in counter narcotics and had effectively co-operated with the United States on drug-related and money laundering cases.
In Katsina State, 100 people were convicted for drug offences from January to May 2008, and 358 people were arrested for drug offences in the same period.