OPERATIVES of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have seized 126 parcels of Canadian Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis weighing 63 kilogrammes, concealed in a used Toyota Corolla car imported from Toronto, Canada, at the Tincan port in Lagos.
The agency said it also, on Saturday, April 22, raided a clandestine factory in Mubi, Adamawa State, where a new psychoactive substance, Akuskura, was being produced in large quantity and distributed to Chad, Cameroon and the Niger Republic.
The spokesperson of the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, disclosing this in a statement he issued on Sunday, April 30, said production activities were ongoing in the premises of the Adamawa factory at the time of the raid.
Babafemi said the NDLEA operatives also thwarted an attempt by a freight agent, Samuel Chukwuemeka Mordi, to export 900 grammes of Loud hidden inside the walls of a travelling bag containing food items to Kenya through the SAHCO export shed of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos on Saturday, April 29.
The spokesman said when Mordi presented the bag, which he claimed contained food items for export, operatives noticed that in the course of searching the consignment, the side walls of the pack were unevenly bloated, after which they dismantled the false packings and recovered the illicit substance.
“The previous day, Friday, April 28, NDLEA operatives at the Tincan port intercepted 63kg Canadian Loud packed in bags in the boot of one of the five used vehicles in a container marked TLLU4840762 coming from Toronto via Montreal during a joint examination with other stakeholders at the port,” Babafemi stated.
The NDLEA said that in Benue state, operatives recovered 859 bottles of codeine-based syrup weighing 117.3kg abandoned by a suspected dealer about two kilometres away from the NDLEA checkpoint along the Enugu–Otukpo road on Wednesday, April 26
Two suspects – Kabiru Muhammed, 35, and 28-year-old Isah Muhammed, – were also arrested with 20 blocks of cannabis weighing 11.2kg concealed in a bag of cassava flakes (garri) along the Zaria-Kano road, Kano, on Friday, April 28.
A reporter with the ICIR
A Journalist with a niche for quality and a promoter of good governance