A businessman, Ibeanusi Solomon Nosike, has 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, by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
The 36-year-old Ibeanusi was arrested in the early hours of Thursday August 8, 2024 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, Abuja at about 10am same day.
The agency through the director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, in a statement, Sunday stated that the suspect who came under NDLEA surveillance aarrived Lagos from his base in Onitsha, Anambra state, the previous day, 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 said the suspect was thereafter intercepted by the operatives who moved him into excretion observation where he spent the next 12 days excreting the cocaine pellets weighing 1.282 kilograms.
He also stated that another Vietnam-bound businessman, 54-year-old Paul Okwuy Mbadugha, was arrested by the operatives at the Abuja airport on August 12, 2024 during the outward clearance 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.
In the same vein, another Onitsha based businessman, Aligbo Chukwudi Jacob, has been arrested by NDLEA operatives following the seizure of a consignment of 1.20kg cannabis concealed in a package going to Dubai, UAE.