The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested a wanted 60-year-old drug kingpin, ending six years of evading the law.

This is contained in a statement on Sunday by NDLEA’s director of media and advocacy, Femi Babafemi.

Mr Babafemi said the suspect was caught while attempting to transport large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine to the South-East zone and other parts of the country.

He said the suspect, who had been on the wanted list of NDLEA since 2019, was eventually nabbed at his hideout in the Isheri area of Lagos on July 13.

Mr Babafemi said this followed the interception of some of his consignments at 5:45 a.m. on the same day at Ilasamaja on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway.

He said a team of NDLEA officers, acting on credible intelligence, had arrested one of the kingpin’s couriers heading to Onitsha, Anambra, in a white Toyota Sienna vehicle.

Mr Babafemi said the agency’s sniffer dogs were subsequently brought in to search the vehicle.

According to him, 7.6 kg of cocaine and 900 grams of methamphetamine were found hidden in the body compartments of the vehicle.

He said a follow-up operation was promptly carried out at the kingpin’s hideout in Isheri.

Additional 1.8kg of cocaine and 1.3kg of methamphetamine, he said, were recovered from his residence.

Mr Babafemi also said the NDLEA operatives, in a joint operation with Aviation Security personnel of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, recovered 7,790 pills of tramadol and Rohypnol.

Mr Babafemi said the drugs, which were in the luggage of an Italy-bound passenger, were intercepted at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport on Wednesday.

He said the suspect, who was going to Italy via Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight, claimed he purchased the drugs himself, hoping to sell them in that country at higher prices.

In another arrest at the Lagos airport, Mr Babafemi said NDLEA operatives at the export shed on Thursday intercepted 17 parcels of skunk, a strain of cannabis.

Mr Babafemi said the drugs, which weighed 1.70kg, were concealed in packs of a popular cereal going to Pakistan as part of a consolidated cargo.

According to him, a suspect was arrested in connection with the incident.

In another development, Mr Babafemi said 45,000 pills of tramadol were seized from a 30-year-old suspect on the Onitsha-Enugu expressway on Wednesday.

Mr Babafemi added that officers of the Taraba command, on the same day, apprehended two suspects with illicit drugs.

He said 10,000 caps of tramadol and a gram of cannabis were recovered from them in the Gassol Local Government Area.

(NAN)