The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has uncovered a heroin trafficking attempt at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. Officers arrested a 38-year-old South African woman, identified as Ms. Will Jessica Ann.
She had allegedly concealed 14 large blocks of heroin, weighing 5.75 kilogrammes, in her luggage. She used her three-year-old son as cover to evade security checks.
NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi confirmed the arrest in a statement. Agency officers made the arrest on Monday, July 6. It happened during the inward clearance of passengers on Qatar Airways flight QR 1433 from Doha to Abuja.
How Officers Uncovered the NDLEA Heroin Trafficking PlotThe suspect initially denied travelling with check-in bags, the statement said. Operatives quickly established that two bags containing the drugs bore tags matching the claim tags on her passport.
She then admitted owning the bags. She claimed she had forgotten she had checked them in.She told operatives she had travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja. Intelligence gathered ahead of her arrest links her to a transnational drug trafficking organisation.
She allegedly operates it with her husband or partner, Jan Coenraad De Jager, who is based in Cambodia. The pair reportedly run their network along the Cambodia-South Africa axis.
Okada Rider Arrested With Ingested Methamphetamine PelletsNDLEA officers made a separate arrest at the Terminal 2 arrival hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on June 28.
They intercepted a commercial motorcycle operator known as an “Okada rider,” 48-year-old Onyechere Daniel Chinadu. He had arrived from Madagascar via Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airlines flight.Officers searched his checked-in backpack and found 87 wraps of methamphetamine concealed within clothing.
Onyechere said in his statement that he had worked as an Okada rider in Lagos’s Oke-Afo area for 15 years. A Uganda-based friend then recruited him into drug trafficking, he said.
He said he had ingested the recovered pellets in Uganda before setting off to deliver the consignment in Madagascar. Immigration authorities denied him entry upon arrival there, he said. His friend and sponsor, Ugandan-based Ozor Igo, then rerouted his flight to Lagos, where NDLEA officers eventually arrested him.
Total of 100 Wraps RecoveredOnyechere could not state the exact number of pellets he had ingested in Uganda, according to the statement. Officers therefore placed him under excretion observation for three days.
He excreted 13 additional pellets between his arrest and July 1. That brought the total recovered to 100 wraps of methamphetamine, with a combined gross weight of 1.715 kilogrammes.
