The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested a 38-year-old South African woman, Will Ann, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for allegedly attempting to smuggle 5.75 kilograms of heroin into Nigeria while travelling with her three-year-old son.
The suspect was apprehended on Monday, July 6, during the arrival clearance of passengers on Qatar Airways Flight QR1433 from Doha.
According to NDLEA, the woman allegedly hid 14 large blocks of heroin inside two suitcases and initially insisted she had no checked-in luggage. However, officers matched the baggage tags to the claim tags attached to her passport, prompting her to admit the bags belonged to her.
“Though she initially denied travelling with check-in bags, after operatives were able to quickly establish that the two bags containing the drugs had tags which tallied with the claim tags attached to her passport, she recanted and admitted ownership of the bags, adding that she forgot she checked in the two bags,” the agency stated.
The anti-drug agency said the suspect claimed she travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja and alleged that intelligence linked her and her husband, Jan Coenraad De Jager, to a transnational drug trafficking network operating along the Cambodia-South Africa route.
In another operation, NDLEA operatives at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos arrested a 48-year-old commercial motorcyclist, Onyechere Chinadu, after he arrived from Madagascar via Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airlines flight.
A search of his backpack led to the recovery of 87 wraps of methamphetamine concealed inside clothing. During interrogation, he reportedly confessed that he had spent 15 years working as an okada rider in Lagos before a Uganda-based associate recruited him into drug trafficking.
“He said he ingested the recovered pellets of methamphetamine in Uganda before embarking on his planned journey to Madagascar to deliver the drug consignment,” the statement said.
NDLEA said the suspect was denied entry into Madagascar and redirected to Lagos by his sponsor. Because he could not state how many drug pellets he had swallowed, he was kept under observation and later excreted 13 additional pellets, increasing the total seizure to 100 wraps of methamphetamine weighing 1.715 kilograms.
The agency also disclosed that its operatives intercepted 8,287 bags of Canadian Loud, a synthetic cannabis strain, weighing 4,143.5 kilograms and valued at more than ₦10.3 billion during an operation at the Apapa Seaport in Lagos.
