NDLEA smashes 2 cross-border drug syndicates, arrests 6 kingpins

Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), after months of intelligence gathering and painstaking surveillance, have smashed two major cross-border drug trafficking syndicates with cocaine and opioids worth billions of naira recovered from them while six leaders of the cartels were arrested in different parts of the country. The syndicates, which comprise Nigerians […]

Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), after months of intelligence gathering and painstaking surveillance, have smashed two major cross-border drug trafficking syndicates with cocaine and opioids worth billions of naira recovered from them while six leaders of the cartels were arrested in different parts of the country.

The syndicates, which comprise Nigerians based in Mubi, Adamawa State; Onitsha, Anambra State, Lagos State, as well as Cameroonians came under NDLEA radar after they were suspected of being major suppliers of drugs to terror groups operating in Nigeria and Cameroon.

Spokesman for the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, on Sunday in Abuja in a statement, said that leaders of the syndicates so far arrested include: Ibrahim Bawuro, Najib Ibrahim, Ibrahim Umar, Nelson Udechukwu Anayo, Ezeh Amaechi Martin and Adejumo Elijah Ishola.

He said that intelligence gathered revealed that some psychoactive substances including tramadol were often sourced by Ibrahim Bawuro and Ibrahim Najib from a notorious drug dealer in Onitsha, named Nelson Udechukwu Anayo and thereafter packed and concealed in vehicles in the premises of Ezeh Amaechi Martin, an associate of Udechukwu.

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“The duo of Ibrahim Bawuro and Ibrahim Najib will thereafter transport the drugs from Onitsha to Yola and subsequently to other parts of the North and Cameroon in specially constructed false compartments of vehicles, which travel from the East to the North at night.

“On 7th October 2024, Bawuro and Najib were trailed from Onitsha where they had gone to buy another consignment and eventually arrested in Taraba the following day, 8th October while a total of 276,500 pills of tramadol were recovered from a Toyota Avensis saloon car marked DKA 57 TT, which they abandoned on the Jalingo-Yola Expressway when they noticed NDLEA operatives were on their trail,” Babafemi said.

He also said that follow up operations were subsequently carried out in Delta and Anambra states where Ezeh Amaechi Martin and Udechukwu Nelson Anayo were arrested by operatives of the NDLEA Directorate of Intelligence, which coordinated the whole effort with their counterparts in Taraba, Adamawa, Delta and Anambra states.

In a separate operation, another leader of a different syndicate, Adejumo Elijah Ishola, 37, was arrested by operatives of a special operation unit of the NDLEA on Tuesday, 5th November at Seme border in Lagos on his way from Ghana with 3.3kgs of cocaine and 600grams of synthetic cannabis.

This followed months of intelligence and surveillance on his cross-border criminal activities.

Meanwhile, NDLEA operatives in Apapa Seaport, Lagos on Wednesday, 6th November intercepted 31,750,000 pills of 240mg Voltron, a controlled opioid, packaged and concealed in a container imported from India, as diclofenac sodium 100mg tablets.

The discovery was made during a joint examination of the container with men of Customs Service and other security agencies.