The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has declared an ex-beauty queen, Ms. Aderinoye Queen Christmas, also known as Ms. Queen Oluwadamilola Aderinoye, wanted after she fled her Lekki, Lagos residence. NDLEA operatives raided her apartment at Oral Estate, Lekki, on Wednesday, 24th January, following credible intelligence that she was involved in illicit substances.
NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi said, "The suspect was Miss Commonwealth Nigeria Culture 2015/2016 and founder of the Queen Christmas Foundation. Recovered from her home during the search, witnessed by estate officials, were 606 grams of Canadian Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, an electronic weighing scale, large quantities of drug packing plastics, a black RAV 4 SUV marked Lagos KSF 872 GQ, and her picture frame, among others."
The NDLEA also arrested a Brazil returnee, Udechukwu Ekene Theophilus, at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, MMIA Ikeja, Lagos, for ingesting 60 large wraps of cocaine. The suspect, arrested during the inward clearance of passengers on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the D-Arrival Hall of the Lagos airport on Sunday, 21st January 2024, initially refused to undergo a body scan, raising health concerns in a desperate bid to evade arrest.
Babafemi stated, "When he was offered other options, he accepted to be placed on excretion observation. Shortly after he was ushered into the NDLEA observatory, he excreted the first set of cocaine pellets, after which he expelled a total of 60 wraps of the class A drug weighing 1.279 kilograms in five excretions. In his statement, Udechukwu claimed he ingested the consignment in Brazil and was to discharge everything at the airport in Addis Ababa but could only excrete 15 pellets, which he handed over to another member of his syndicate before his connecting flight to Nigeria was called."
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In the same vein, NDLEA operatives at the Lagos airport on Tuesday, 23rd January, recovered a total of 12 cartons of tramadol 225mg containing 599,900 pills weighing 385.40kg from an overstayed cargo at the SAHCO import shed of the Lagos airport after a joint examination with other agencies. The tramadol consignment had arrived in the country in two batches on KLM Royal Dutch Airline flights from Karachi, Pakistan, between 27th July and 1st August 2023. They were placed under watch by NDLEA operatives since then.
Additionally, two members of an international drug trafficking syndicate, Sunday Michael Owoborode, 52, and Valentine Anene, were arrested on Thursday, 25th January, at Edu Orita, Ogun State, where Valentine was preparing to travel with some drugs to Qatar the same day on board a Qatar airline flight from Lagos. "At the time of their arrest, 1.8kg cannabis, an electronic weighing scale, and other illicit substances were found on them," Babafemi stated.
