Nigeria’s booming methamphetamine business

Simon Ateba/Lagos

On the plane, up there in the skies, a 32-year old Nigerian woman began to excrete wraps of methamphetamine swallowed in Malaysia, the Southeast Asian country. She was travelling to Nigeria’s commercial city of Lagos last December.

The suspect, Chizoba Anya Vivian, had boarded the plane with five wraps of methamphetamine concealed in her stomach.

The drug was meant to be delivered in Lagos, but right there on the plane and up there in the air, it began to fall off.

The suspect began to visit the toilets so often that she aroused suspicion from flight attendants.

And by the time the plane landed at the Murtala Muhammed International in Lagos, it was discovered that she had excreted three wraps of methamphetamine right on the plane.

She was immediately arrested and placed under observation and later excreted two additional wraps of the sweet but deadly drug, said Hamza Umar, Lagos Airport Commander of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA.

“The suspect was found with three wraps which she excreted in the aircraft. While she was under observation at the Lagos airport, she excreted two additional wraps of drugs. The five wraps which tested positive for methamphetamine weighed 80 grammes,” Umar said in a press statement made public on 30 December last year.

If Chizoba was coming to Lagos from Malaysia, Olewunne Chibuzor Darlington was travelling in the opposite direction.

On 11 December, NDLEA announced that it had arrested Darlington, an electronic dealer at Alaba International market, Lagos in connection with unlawful exportation of 450 grammes of methamphetamine to Malaysia.

The suspect claimed he had invested N900,000 in the drug trafficking business with the promise and expectation that he would make a profit of N5 million.

But things did not go as planned and he ended up in a cell after he was arrested by anti-narcotics officers at the Lagos Airport.

Darlington and Vivian were not the only ones arrested for methamphetamine trafficking last December.

On 26 December, NDLEA spokesperson, Mitchell Ofoyeju, disclosed in a press statement that his men had arrested three customs licensed clearing and forwarding agents and a motorcycle parts dealer.

The suspects were being interrogated in connection with three shipments of methamphetamine meant for export to Malaysia on an Ethiopian Airways flight at the Lagos Airport.

The drug, weighing 70.4 kilogrammes, had an estimated street value of N352 million, according to NDLEA.

The three agents were Adewuyi Segun, 45, Atebata Godwin, 27 and Akpaida Kareem Ajayi, 33.

In addition, Ukpabi Paul, a 36-year old motorcycle parts dealer at Nnewi, Anambra State, south-eastern Nigeria was also arrested.

The demand for methamphetamine seems to be increasing by the day as on 6 January this year, NDLEA disclosed that it had aborted a plot to export 9.2 kilogrammes of methamphetamine hidden inside palm oil to South Africa.

The discovery, the agency said, was made during screening of cargoes on a South African Airline flight at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.

Okwuokei Peter, taxi driver who brought the consignment to the airport was apprehended by anti-narcotic officials.

Nigerians are not only exporting the drug, they are producing it and NDLEA is closing clandestine methamphetamine laboratories across the country.

On 19 December, the agency announced in a statement that it had discovered another methamphetamine Clandestine Laboratory at Shapeti, off Lekki-Epe Expressway Lagos.

The lab, the sixth of such illegal methamphetamine production factories uncovered in the last two years in various parts of the country, was located opposite two private nursery schools.

Statistics for drug trafficking and drug abuse in Nigeria are mind boggling.

Last year alone, between January and October, the Lagos State Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency apprehended 420 suspected drug traffickers with 8,300.277kg of various drugs.

Within the period, 69 persons were convicted for drug related charges while other cases are pending.

NDLEA commander in the State, Aliyu Sule, who gave the statistics, described drug abuse in Lagos as alarming.

According to the NDLEA, sixteen million Nigerians abuse cannabis also known as hemp. No fewer than ten million others use one narcotic drug or the other while about seven million are cocaine/heroin addicts.

Drug abuse, NDLEA says, is increasing the number of mentally deranged youths, school drop-outs as well as HIV/AIDS infections due to drug injection.

Above all drug-related violence, terrorist acts, and drug induced crimes like rape; murder, armed robbery and suicide are easily done when under the influence of drug.

In all of these, methamphetamine business seems to be booming and more Nigerians are taking to the illegal and dangerous trade.