The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested a suspect, Ukaegbu Onyekachi, for cocaine trafficking.
Onyekachi was intercepted on Tuesday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, according to Ahmadu Garba, a senior official of the anti-drug agency.
He confirmed that the suspect was arrested with 3.30 kilogrammes of the illicit drugs during the inward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines at the E-arrival hall of the airport.
Garba, who is the NDLEA commander at the airport, explained that Onyekachi arrived in Nigeria onboard Ethiopian Airways from Sao Paulo in Brazil via Addis Ababa.
He disclosed that the hard drugs were cleverly concealed in t-shirt stickers, but the suspect could not escape the eagle eyes of the NDLEA detectives.
The newly-appointed Chairman of the NDLEA, Buba Marwa, had issued marching orders to commanders in the agency to mop up illicit drugs across the country.
Following the directive by the NDLEA boss, the agency said it had made the biggest single seizure of cocaine from an individual in the last 15 years.
NDLEA detectives seized 26.84 kilogrammes of cocaine at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, on Wednesday last week.
A female suspect, Onyejegbu Jennifer, who had also just returned to Nigeria from Sao Paulo via Addis Ababa was arrested in connection with the offence.
“A field test was conducted on the recovered substances and proved positive to cocaine and weighed 26.850kilogrammes,” the agency said in a statement released on Saturday last week.
It added, “The suspect who is a hairstylist and based in Brazil was interviewed and she confessed to having agreed to smuggle the hard drug for the sum of two million naira (N2,000,000) only.
“Although she refused to disclose the names of her associates, she mentioned that she was asked to hand over the drugs to another person. The street value of this singular seizure is put at over N21 billion.”