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Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have intercepted consignments of captagon, commonly known as the ‘jihadi drug,’ and millions of opioid pills worth over N6.2 billion at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, the agency said on Sunday.
NDLEA spokesman Femi Babafemi said in a statement that the captagon shipment, valued at over N1.5 billion, was seized following the arrest of 49-year-old cross-border kingpin Akinbile Kazeem Aikins, who arrived from Accra, Ghana, aboard an African World Airlines flight on August 22.
A search of his carton of local bathing soap, popularly called “Ghana Soap,” led to the recovery of 47,200 pills of the illicit amphetamine drug concealed within blocks of soap, Babafemi said.
“After his arrest, Akinbile claimed he was meant to deliver the consignment in the North,” Babafemi said, putting the street value of the drugs at 1.5 billion naira (about $1.1 million).
Captagon, notoriously dubbed the ‘jihadi drug’ for its use in funding extremist activities in conflict zones, was first intercepted in Nigeria by NDLEA in September 2021 at the Apapa port in Lagos.
In another interdiction operation at the Lagos airport, no fewer than 3,900,030 tablets of Tramaking 225mg and Tapentadol 250mg, with a combined gross weight of 2,787.40 kilograms and more than N4.6 billion in street value, were recovered from four abandoned consignments at the import shed, Babafemi said.
“Three of the consignments, comprising 900,000 tablets of Tramaking (815.40kg), arrived aboard RwandAir flights from Bangladesh, while a fourth, comprising 3,000,030 tablets of Tapentadol (1,972kg), arrived on Qatar Airways from Amsterdam,” Babafemi said.
The shipments, which had been placed under close watch after no one showed up to claim them, were formally retrieved after a joint examination by NDLEA officers, Customs and other stakeholders on August 28, according to the spokesman.
