A single week of coordinated raids across Lagos has torn open a web of drug trafficking networks stretching from Balogun Market to the Apapa seaport, netting the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency roughly N10 billion worth of cocaine, synthetic cannabis, opioids, and other illicit substances.
The scale of the haul, detailed in a statement by NDLEA spokesman Femi Babafemi in Abuja on Sunday, points to a trafficking operation far more sprawling than any single arrest would suggest.
The first thread began to unravel on Wednesday, when operatives at the export shed of Lagos airport intercepted 3.30 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside the walls of cartons meant to carry foodstuffs to the United Kingdom. That seizure led investigators to a 55-year-old clothing trader from Balogun Market on Lagos Island, arrested the following day. But the trail did not end with him. Three cargo agents who had handled the shipment were picked up next, and their arrests exposed another supplier who had delivered the consignment for shipping. That lead ultimately pointed to the alleged kingpin of the entire syndicate, arrested while preparing yet another cocaine shipment to the UK.
While that case was unfolding, a separate operation was closing in on a 31-year-old entrepreneur in Surulere. NDLEA operatives arrested her on Tuesday, July 21, days after intercepting 2.80 kilograms of Loud, a synthetic cannabis strain, that had arrived from the United States aboard a United Airlines flight.
The seizures did not stop at street-level networks. At Lagos airport, a joint cargo examination on Friday uncovered 2.2 million pills of Tapentadol 250mg, worth more than N2.2 billion, shipped in from India aboard an Air Maroc flight, an operation Babafemi said was driven entirely by processed intelligence. Just days earlier, on Wednesday, July 22, operatives at a Lagos courier firm had intercepted a separate consignment of tramadol concealed inside containers of black soap destined for the UK.
The most staggering figure, though, came from Apapa seaport, where a container disguised as a shipment of three vehicles was found to be hiding 4,777 sachets of Canadian Loud. Weighing nearly 2,389 kilograms and valued at over N7.1 billion, the discovery was made during a joint cargo examination on Monday, July 20, making it the single largest seizure in the week’s operations.
Taken together, the arrests and interceptions paint a picture of an agency working across multiple fronts at once, chasing leads from market stalls to residential arrests to shipping containers, each seizure feeding into the next.
