The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in Osun has arrested a pastor and a 27 year-old man with 181 bags of cannabis sativa popularly known as Indian hemp.
The sector commander of the Agency, Anthonia Edeh, made this known on Friday while addressing newsmen in Osogbo.
According to Edeh, the 45-year-old pastor, and one other person were arrested at Ikire in Irewole Local Government Area of the state on Dec. 5, with the illicit weed weighing 1,838.4 kilogramme.
"Men of the command swooped into action based on the information received from patriotic Nigerians and arrested the two suspects in a three rooms apartment, where the bags of Indian hemp were stocked," she said.
She added that two of the bags were full with cannabis seeds, which the suspects wanted to keep for the next planting season.
The commander also revealed that three others suspects, including a woman escaped arrest.
She said, "Efforts are on to nab the fleeing culprits, though the pastor is claiming innocence of the crime saying that he was only a co-tenant of the other suspect.
"The agency has no constitutional power to exonerate him, only the court has the power and the two men will be arraigned soon," she said.
Edeh further said that men of the command recovered 68.8 kilogramme of Indian hemp, stocked inside a Volkswagen Vento car marked AW 652 AKR, on Dec. 2, along Ilobu Road in Osogbo.
She said that the owner of the car, who was on the road side waiting for suspected buyer took to his heels when sighted men of the command.
The commander admonished the general public to be conscious of their environment and report the activities of drug peddlers or traffickers to the security operatives.
She reiterated the commitment of the agency to put an end to the cultivation, trafficking and peddling of Indian hemp across the state, and urged the people to cooperate with the agency in the drug war crusade.
She also cautioned commercial drivers to beware of the loads they carry "now that we are at the peak of harvesting period".
NAN
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How can any responsible parent not desire a saner drug policy, and one that’s based on facts rather than reefer madness? Prohibition guarantees that many illegal drugs are far easier for our children to procure than even alcohol or nicotine. That's because, even though these are both very dangerous and addictive drugs, they are at least sold in properly controlled and regulated environments.
Under our present regime, certain plants/concoctions/drugs are sold only by criminals and terrorists; the huge black-market profits are used to threaten innocent civilians, bribe law enforcement officials, and buy support from unconscionable politicians; the availability and usage rates tend to go up, not down, and our prisons have become filled to capacity with easily replaced vendors and smugglers —this list of dangerous and negative consequences is actually endless. To continue prohibition is ludicrous, and those of us who can't see that by now, must be either severely mentally challenged or using something far stronger than any of us have even heard of.
Why on earth should we be willing to whack ourselves with ever-bigger and more-repressive prohibition hammers, while drug use and availability keep going up, not down, and while we all plunge deeper into Loserville?
Think of all the Jobs and the the Energy Independence that could be had do to ignorance based on a corrupt UN treaty from 1961