A 30-year-old Italy-based businessman Joseph Cyril has been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport (AIIA) Enugu for ingesting 98 wraps of cocaine while heading to Italy via Addis Ababa and France.
The suspect who was nabbed at the departure hall of the airport on Sunday, August 2nd, during the outward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight ET930, was subsequently placed on excretion observation during which he excreted 98 wraps of cocaine weighing 1.510 kilograms.
Investigations revealed that Cyril had arrived Nigeria from Italy on July 13th and ingested the drug in a hotel in Awka, Anambra State before proceeding to Enugu to board his flight to Europe on Sunday, August 2nd. In his statement, he claimed he has been doing business in Italy for years before agreeing to traffic the drug consignment for a fee of 3,500 Euros in order to raise money to relocate to Germany where his family is based.
In a related development, 25 pieces of phone chargers going to Saudi Arabia were thwarted by NDLEA operatives at a courier firm in Lagos. A similar bid to send 500 grams of the same class A drug hidden in the false bottom of a backpack to Italy was equally aborted in another logistics company by NDLEA officers on Monday, August 3rd, while a consignment of 2.3kg Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, coming from the United States was intercepted in another shipping company in Lagos on Tuesday, August 4th.