Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa on Wednesday said N6 billion worth of drugs meant for insurgents were intercepted by the agency.
Marwa, who spoke at a media briefing to update the public on the seizure, said loads of Captagon, a brand of Amphetamine were intercepted by operatives of the agency at the Apapa Port in Lagos State.
According to him, sometime in March 2021, the agency received intelligence from its international partners on the shipment of illicit narcotics to Nigeria from the Middle East through the Apapa Port.
The container passed through three countries and was trans-loaded in a North African country, but the NDLEA kept track of it along with its partners, he explained.
“We made the first attempt to examine the container on Thursday, August 26, 2021, and what we found inside the container were three (3) pieces of marble polishing machines, otherwise called sanders,” he said while narrating how the seizure was made.
“Further scrutiny on Monday, August 31, with the NDLEA sniffer dogs turned up a positive indication on the rotor coil of one of the three machines. The next day, Wednesday, 1st September, 18,560 tablets of a drug suspected to be Amphetamine (Captagon) weighing 3.2kg was found deeply concealed in one of the coils.
“The following day, Thursday, September 2, the other two machines were dismantled, and in all, a total of 451, 807 tablets, weighing 74.119 kilograms, were discovered hidden inside their rotor coils.
“Going by the street value of about $25 per tablet, the importer would have raised $11.3million, which is equivalent to N6 billion.
