A South African woman allegedly used her three-year-old son as a cover to smuggle 5.75 kilograms of heroin through the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has revealed.
The 38-year-old suspect was arrested on Monday, 6 July, during inward clearance of passengers on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Abuja.
She initially denied travelling with any checked luggage, but officers established that two bags containing the drugs bore baggage tags matching those on her passport.
"She eventually admitted ownership of the bags after claiming she had forgotten that she checked them in," the NDLEA said.
Investigations revealed she had travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja, and intelligence gathered indicates she is allegedly linked to a transnational drug trafficking network operating along the Cambodia-South Africa route.
In Lagos, NDLEA operatives at Murtala Muhammed International Airport arrested a 48-year-old commercial motorcycle rider on arrival from Madagascar via Addis Ababa aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight.
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A search of his backpack uncovered 87 wraps of methamphetamine hidden inside clothing.
He told investigators he had ridden commercial motorcycles in Lagos for about 15 years before being recruited into drug trafficking by an associate based in Uganda.
The rider also admitted to swallowing additional drug pellets before a planned trip to Madagascar, but was denied entry on arrival and rerouted to Lagos.
Three days of excretion observation yielded 13 more pellets, bringing the total seizure to 100 wraps of methamphetamine weighing 1.715 kilograms.
At the Apapa Seaport in Lagos, NDLEA officers working with Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) personnel and other agencies intercepted a container from Canada holding 8,287 nylon bags of Canadian Loud, a potent cannabis strain, weighing 4,143.5 kilograms, with an estimated street value of over N10.3 billion.
The seizure followed weeks of intelligence-led tracking by the agency's Maritime Intelligence Unit.
In another operation, operatives foiled an attempt to export 2.5 kilograms of skunk concealed inside a gas compressor destined for Cyprus through a Lagos courier company.
Beyond enforcement, the agency sustained its War Against Drug Abuse campaign with sensitisation programmes in schools, communities, workplaces and places of worship across Ebonyi, Kano, Ekiti and Ogun states, alongside advocacy visits to government officials.
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