Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency have intercepted not less than 76.9 kilograms of Canadian loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, from four used vehicles in a container marked MSDU6686346 from Canada, at the Port Harcourt Ports Complex, Onne, Rivers State.
The illicit drugs were seized between Thursday, June 1 and Friday, June 2, during a joint inspection of the shipment with men of the Nigeria Customs Service.
“This followed the request for 100 per cent examination of the shipment as a result of earlier intelligence received by the agency on the container,” the spokesperson for the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi said.
He also noted that operatives stormed the Iwe forest in the Iwe community, Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State, where they located a large warehouse of skunk, used to store 231 jumbo bags of the psychotropic substance weighing 3,003 kilograms, which was set ablaze.
He added, “The operation involving hundreds of well-armed NDLEA operatives in the early hours of Tuesday, May 30, followed intelligence that a wanted drug kingpin had stored tons of the illicit substance in the forest ready for distribution to other parts of the country.
“In Kano state, two suspects – Ma’aruf Rabiu and Abubakar Mustapha were arrested on Tuesday, May 30 along Zaria-Kano road with 260 blocks of cannabis weighing 139.4kg, while Auwal Ibrahim was nabbed with 38kg of the same substance the following day, along Kaduna-Abuja road, same day 35-year-old female suspect, Bilkisu Isiya, was arrested at Birnin Yero, Kaduna in possession of 5.6kg cannabis.
“In Borno state, two suspects – Abubakar Usman (aka Alhaji Mai Kero) and Adamu Yusuf, were arrested at Bargu village, Shani LGA, on Saturday, June 3, with 165 blocks of skunk weighing 140.7kg. Their arrest was effected with military support, deep inside a fluid insurgents’ environment.”
Also, a female suspect, Hauwa Ibrahim, 25, was also nabbed in the same village with 6.4kg of the psychoactive substance, while another suspect Alhaji Abubakar, 27, was arrested at Njimtilo checkpoint with 4,200 ampoules of pentazocine injection and different quantities of D5 and excel-5 tablets.
“A 30-year-old suspect, Iroko Wasiu was arrested at a drug joint at Sabo Aba-Owolowo along Oyo-Ogbomoso expressway on Tuesday, May 39, and 31.2kg of cannabis was recovered from him, while two suspects – Deji Adelabu, 35, and Mutiu Salau, 37, were nabbed the following day in the Sabo area along Oyo-Ogbomoso road and Awuro Dada area in Orire local government area of Oyo state with a total of 8kg cannabis recovered from them,” Babafemi added.
