A repentant Boko Haram fighter, Alayi Madu and the traditional ruler, Baale Akinola Adebayo and 35 other suspects have been arrested for drug trafficking at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, MMIA Ikeja, Lagos and in raids across 12 States in the past week.
Adebayo, ruler of Kajola, a border community between Ondo and Edo State was nabbed by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency over 2.2 tons of siezed illicit drugs, Babafemi Femi said in a statement on Sunday.
The statement said 26-year-old Alayi Madu, who was a Boko Haram fighter for 15 years before he surrendered to the Nigerian military in 2021 was intercepted by NDLEA operatives on Thursday 9th March on Abuja-Kaduna expressway.
He was nabbed with 10 kilograms of skunk, which he said he bought in Ibadan, Oyo state and was taking the consignment concealed in a sack to Maiduguri, Borno State.
During interrogation, Madu told NDLEA agents that he is from Banki town, Borno State and joined the notorious terrorist organisation, in 2006 when he was nine years old.
He explained that he repented and surrendered to the military in 2021, after which he underwent rehabilitation and de-radicalisation processes at Umaru Shehu rehabilitation centre, Maiduguri and Malam Sidi de-radicalization centre, Gombe before he was discharged after spending six months.
Thereafter, the suspect, traveled to Ibadan, Oyo State where he worked as commercial motorcycle rider (Okada rider) before going into drug trafficking and his eventual arrest along Abuja-Kaduna express road.
At the Lagos airport in Ikeja, operatives acting on intelligence intercepted a consignment of 11.90 kilograms of heroin and 500grams of skunk concealed in deep freezers, which were part of a cargo that arrived from South Africa on Tuesday 7th March onboard Ethiopian airline via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Agency’s sniffer dogs were deployed to locate where the illicit drugs were hidden in the cargo and in no time, they identified the cartons packed in the deep freezers.
A total of four suspects that played active roles in the movement of the drugs and a truck driver have been arrested so far in connection with the seizure.
The suspects were identified as Dairo Quam; Oluwaseun Ogunmene; Adeleke Abdulrasaq; Bamidele Adewale and Oluwafemi Ogunmeru.
Leave a Reply