Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, have smashed two major cross-border drug trafficking syndicates with cocaine and opioids worth billions of naira recovered from them while six leaders of the cartels were arrested in different parts of the country.
The syndicates, which comprise Nigerians based in Mubi, Adamawa state; Onitsha, Anambra state, and Lagos state as well as Cameroonians came under agency radar after they were suspected of being major suppliers of drugs to terror groups operating in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Leaders of the syndicates so far arrested include: Ibrahim Bawuro, Najib Ibrahim, Ibrahim Umar, Nelson Udechukwu Anayo, Ezeh Amaechi Martin and Adejumo Elijah Ishola.
Intelligence gathered revealed that some psychoactive substances including tramadol were often sourced by Ibrahim Bawuro and Ibrahim Najib from a notorious drug dealer in Onitsha: Nelson Udechukwu Anayo and thereafter packed and concealed in vehicles in the premises of Ezeh Amaechi Martin, an associate of Udechukwu.
The duo of Ibrahim Bawuro and Ibrahim Najib will thereafter transport the drugs from Onitsha to Yola and subsequently to other parts of the North and Cameroon in specially constructed false compartments of vehicles, which travel from the East to the North at night.
Bawuro and Najib were trailed from Onitsha where they had gone to buy another consignment and eventually arrested in Taraba the following day while a total of 276,500 pills of tramadol were recovered from a Toyota Avensis saloon car marked DKA 57 TT, which they abandoned on the Jalingo-Yola expressway when they noticed the agency operatives were on their trail.
Follow up operations were subsequently carried out in Delta and Anambra states where Ezeh Amaechi Martin and Udechukwu Nelson Anayo were arrested.
Another leader of a different syndicate, Adejumo Elijah Ishola, 37, was arrested by operatives of a special operation unit of the Agency at Seme border in Lagos on his way from Ghana with 3.3 kilograms of cocaine and 600grams of synthetic cannabis. This followed months of intelligence and surveillance on his cross-border criminal activities.
