NDLEA Smashes Cross-border Drug Syndicates, Arrests 6 Kingpins

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), after months of intelligence gathering and painstaking surveillance, smashed two major cross-border drug trafficking syndicates.

The anti-narcotic agency also recovered cocaine and opioids worth billions of naira from the syndicates while six leaders of the cartels were arrested in different parts of the country.

NDLEA’s spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, gave the names of the six arrested syndicates’ leaders as Ibrahim Bawuro, Najib Ibrahim, Ibrahim Umar, Nelson Udechukwu Anayo, Ezeh Amaechi Martin and Adejumo Elijah Ishola.

The suspects came under NDLEA radar after they were suspected of being major suppliers of drugs to terror groups operating in Nigeria and Cameroon.

Babafemi said the syndicates comprise Nigerians based in Mubi, Adamawa State; Onitsha, Anambra State, and Lagos State as well as Cameroonians.

The NDLEA said, “Intelligence gathered revealed that some psychoactive substances including tramadol were often sourced by Bawuro and Najib from a notorious drug dealer in Onitsha – Anayo, and thereafter packed and concealed in vehicles in the premises of Martin, an associate of Udechukwu.

“The duo of Bawuro and 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.”

The NDLEA further explained that “on October 7, 2024, Bawuro and Najib were trailed from Onitsha, where they had gone to buy another consignment and were eventually arrested in Taraba the following day, October 8”.

The agency revealed that a total of 276,500 pills of tramadol were recovered from a Toyota Avensis saloon car marked DKA 57 TT, which the suspects abandoned on the Jalingo-Yola Expressway when they noticed NDLEA operatives were on their trail.

“Follow-up operations were subsequently carried out in Delta and Anambra States where Martin and 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,” the statement added.

The NDLEA also said another leader of a different syndicate, 37-year-old Adejumo Elijah Ishola, was arrested by operatives of a special operation unit of the agency on Tuesday, November 5, at Seme border in Lagos on his way from Ghana with 3.3 kilograms of cocaine and 600grams of synthetic cannabis.

NDLEA said the arrest followed months of intelligence and surveillance on his cross-border criminal activities.

Meanwhile, NDLEA operatives in Apapa seaport Lagos on Wednesday, November 6, 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.

Babafemi stressed that the discovery was made during a joint examination of the container with men of the Nigeria Customs Service and other security agencies.