Drug lord nabbed while feeding courier 93 pellets of cocaine

A drug kingpin who specialises in sponsoring young Nigerians to traffic Class A drugs to Europe, especially Italy, has been caught by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency at his hotel room in the Okota area of Lagos while he was preparing a recruited courier to swallow 93 pellets of cocaine meant for distribution in Italy.

The Director of Media and Advocacy of the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, revealed this in a statement on Sunday.

Babafemi said the 48-year-old drug kingpin, Charles Uwagbale, had recruited Uju Dominic, 35, from his base in Italy with a deal to come to Nigeria, ingest 100 pellets of cocaine on July 21, 2023 and return to Italy on July 22, 203.

True to plan, upon the arrival in Nigeria, the mule was lodged in Golden Heaven Hotel located at Enoma Street, off Ago Palace way, Okota, Isolo, Lagos, where Uwagbale brought 93 wraps of the Class A drug for him to swallow at about 11:45pm on Friday.

They were in the process when NDLEA operatives who have been on their trail following credible intelligence stormed their hotel room, arrested both and recovered the drug exhibits with a total weight of 1.427 kilograms.

The deal was busted by operatives of the Lagos State Command of the Agency.

Operatives of the Lagos state Command, who made the arrest and seizure had on Thursday, July 20th raided Akala in Mushin area of the state where they recovered 37.5kg cannabis from the home of a fleeing suspect.

Meanwhile, attempts to smuggle 98 cartons containing Five Million One Hundred and Twenty Two Thousand Nine Hundred (5, 122, 900) pills of Tramadol 225mg with an estimated street value of about N3.7bn into Nigeria through the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, have been thwarted through the robust synergy between men of the Nigeria Customs Service and NDLEA officers at the airport as well as those at the DHL cargo warehouse.

Preliminary findings revealed that the consignments were imported from India and Pakistan, while some of the seized consignments had Freetown, Sierra Leone as final destination.