Two Nigerian businessmen based in Europe have been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) after they were caught attempting to smuggle 200 wraps of cocaine, weighing 3.46 kilogrammes, to Paris, France.
This was contained in a statement issued on Sunday, November 1, by the NDLEA Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi.
The suspects, identified as Aliocus Godian Odife and Sam Blackborn, were intercepted on October 28, 2026, during the outward clearance of an Air France flight, AF 832, from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
The NDLEA said both men had ingested the cocaine wraps before boarding the flight but were arrested after body scans confirmed the presence of foreign objects in their stomachs.
Odife, who reportedly lives in France and works in a factory, had arrived in Nigeria on October 21 for a short holiday. He was arrested while attempting to return to France after a body scan revealed that he had swallowed 110 wraps of cocaine.
He was subsequently placed under observation and excreted all 110 wraps, weighing 1.901 kilogrammes.
His co-traveller, Blackborn, also tested positive for ingestion and confessed to swallowing 90 wraps, which he later excreted. The cocaine recovered from him weighed 1.559 kilogrammes.
In a separate operation, NDLEA operatives arrested a woman, Aisha Isah, along the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway with 266 rounds of live AK-47 ammunition.
The agency also recorded major drug seizures across several states, including Lagos, Oyo, Kano, Kaduna, Ondo, Edo and Sokoto.
In Lagos, operatives intercepted two commercial vehicles conveying 976 kilogrammes of skunk along Kudirat Abiola Way, Ikeja, and the Gbagada-Oshodi Expressway on October 25.
In Oyo State, two suspects, Oguntona Nasiru, 46, and Soji Balogun, 47, were arrested on October 29 while loading 554 kilogrammes of skunk into a Volvo truck at Idere Road, Igboora.
The operation was reportedly targeted at a notorious drug dealer identified as Omo Oba, who escaped arrest during an earlier operation on October 25, when 309.5 kilogrammes of cannabis, popularly known as Ghanaian Loud, allegedly linked to him were seized.
In Kano State, NDLEA operatives recovered 247,500 tablets of diazepam and 100,000 tablets of Exol-5 during a raid in the Tsamiya area of Gezawa on October 26. Another operation in Dorayi led to the arrest of two men, Ziya’ulhaq Abdullahi, 35, and Garba Muhammed, 52, with 19,250 tramadol tablets.
Also, a 68-year-old man, Ifeanyi Egwolonwu, was arrested at Gwargwaje, Zaria, along the Zaria-Kano Expressway, with 2,770 ampoules of pentazocine injection, 100 ampoules of diazepam injection, 11,000 diazepam tablets and 4,500 Exol-5 tablets.
In another raid at Tashan Banke, seven suspects, including Faisal Adamu, were arrested, while 178.85 kilogrammes of cannabis and various quantities of diazepam, tramadol, Exol-5 and pregabalin were recovered.
In Ondo State, four suspects were arrested during a raid on cannabis farms in Ijare Forest, where 180 kilogrammes of processed cannabis were recovered.
Similarly, NDLEA operatives, supported by soldiers, destroyed a cannabis plantation covering 1.646 hectares at Eko Camp, Ilushi, in Esan South-East Local Government Area of Edo State. The plantation was estimated to have a potential yield of 4,115.53 kilogrammes.
A 50-year-old woman, Christiana Uboi, was arrested at the camp with 301 kilogrammes of processed cannabis, while another 176 kilogrammes was recovered during the operation.
In Sokoto State, a 68-year-old man, Ibrahim Ayuba, was arrested on October 31 with 236.6 kilogrammes of skunk.
The NDLEA also disclosed that its commands across the country sustained public awareness campaigns under its War Against Drug Abuse initiative, targeting schools, religious centres, workplaces and communities.
The agency’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd.), commended officers of the affected commands for the arrests and seizures.
Marwa described the arrest of the two cocaine couriers at Abuja airport as a warning to Nigerians living abroad who might attempt to use their foreign residence as cover for drug trafficking.
He urged officers to sustain the pressure on drug trafficking networks while intensifying efforts to discourage drug abuse through public sensitisation programmes.
