The operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have recovered 81 jumbo bags of cannabis weighing 1,278kgs from a notorious drug lord and an ex-convict, Ibrahim Momoh, popularly known as ‘Ibrahim Bendel’, in Abuja.

The NDLEA spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, disclosed this via a statement issued and made available to The Star on Sunday.

Babafemi stated that though the fleeing drug dealer was still at large and wanted by the NDLEA, his warehouse keeper, 55-year-old Ghanaian, Richard Forson Gordon, was arrested during the raid.

He noted that Momoh was first arrested on November 27, 2014, with the same substance weighing 385.1kgs, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on April 22, 2020, but escaped from jail after three months.

The NDLEA spokesman added that no fewer than 2,000 bottles of codeine-based syrup were seized in a commercial bus by the operatives of the anti-drug agency on Friday along the Lokoja-Abuja expressway.

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Babafemi disclosed that 241 bags of the psychoactive substance with a gross weight of 3,133kg were recovered from a building at Ilale Cashew, Ehinogbe, Owo, Ondo State, last Tuesday, adding that 507.9kgs of cannabis were also seized during a raid at the hideout of a fleeing drug dealer in Mushin area of Lagos State on Thursday.

He stated that 53 jumbo bags of C/S weighing 567.05kgs were seized from three suspects, Bassey Boniface Eyibio, 38, 30-year-old Effiong Akiba Etim, and 45-year-old Ngbong Raymond, at Mpara junction, Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River on Thursday while conveying the consignment in a bus marked CKK 74 AA.

The NDLEA spokesperson revealed that the anti-narcotics officers equally arrested another suspect, Ali Mohammed, along Potiskum-Damaturu Road after they found 29,090 tablets of tramadol in his personal Honda car marked ABC 914 RW coming from Gombe to Damaturu, Yobe State.

Speaking on the arrests and seizures, the NDLEA Chairman urged the officers of the anti-drug agency and their counterparts across other formations to continue to step up their offensives against drug cartels.

The Star