NDLEA nabs two wanted drug barons, others

By Hannah Nathan, Warri

After weeks of intelligence-driven operations across the nation and abroad, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) stated that its officers have captured two wanted leaders of transnational criminal organizations and seized assets and illicit substances worth billions of naira from them.

According to NDLEA, the arrest of the suspected drug lords followed the discovery by NDLEA officers at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, NAIA, Abuja, of cocaine and heroin consignments hidden in the stomachs of two traffickers traveling to Paris, France, and Doha, Qatar.

Femi Babafemi, the director of media and advocacy for the NDLEA, said this in a statement on Sunday.

Hakeem Babatunde Salami, the leader of the “Tajudeen Babatunde Abioye Transnational Criminal Organization,” who was involved in the illegal trade of several narcotics including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and ephedrine between Nigeria, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Europe, was arrested on Tuesday by agency operatives at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, MMIA, Ikeja, Lagos.

The NDLEA claimed that Salami left Nigeria for South Africa after one of his syndicate members, Suleiman Babatunde Oba, was detained at the Lagos airport on August 25 for attempting to export 25.10kg of ephedrine to that country