NDLEA Smashes Cross-border Drug Syndicates, Arrests 6

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 six syndicate leaders arrested are 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.

NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi said the syndicates comprise Nigerians based in Mubi, Adamawa State; Onitsha, Anambra State, and Lagos State; and 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.

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“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 eventually arrested in Taraba the following day October 8, 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.

“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 NDLEA also said another leader of a different syndicate, Adejumo Elijah Ishola, 37, 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.

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