Two drug lords have excreted 125 wraps of heroin at different airports in the country.
This followed the thwarting of the moves to smuggle the drug into Nigeria by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency last week.
According to available information on Sunday, the drug kingpins were nabbed by the NDLEA operatives at Port Harcourt International Airport in Rivers State and Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos State.
One of the kingpins, who uses dual identities to aid his cross border movements, has a Nigerian passport with his original name: Onyekwonike Elochuckwu Sylvanus, 30, and that of Sierra Leone with a different name: Kargbo Mohamed Foday.
Sylvanus was intercepted by NDLEA officers with his Sierra Leonean passport on February 2, 2025 at the Port Harcourt International Airport during the inward clearance of passengers on Qatar Airways flight from Doha through Abuja to Port Harcourt.
He was subsequently taken for body scan, which confirmed he ingested illicit drugs.
He was thereafter placed under excretion observation, during which he expelled a total of 62 wraps of heroin in five excretions, weighing 1.348 kilograms.
Investigation revealed that he alternates his two identities for different drug trafficking missions running through Thailand, Pakistan, Iran, and West African countries.
Sylvanus claimed to have gone full time into the illicit drug trade in 2017 when his clothing and shoe business went down.
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The second kingpin: James Herbert Chinoso, 48, was arrested by NDLEA operatives at the MMIA on February 1 upon his arrival from Madagascar via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on an Ethiopian Airlines flight.
After a body scan confirmed illicit drug in his system, Chinoso was placed under excretion observation, during which he egested 63 wraps of heroin with a total weight of 909 grams.
He had left Lagos to Madagascar on January 26, 2025 and returned via Addis Ababa after spending a week.
He claimed to have gone into the criminal trade after his phone accessories business in Liberia collapsed.
Two parcels of 2.82 kilograms of Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, imported from the United States of America with Lagos as destination, were equally intercepted by NDLEA operatives of the Directorate of Operations and General Investigation at a courier firm in Lagos on February 6.
In another interdiction operation the same day but in a different logistics company in Lagos, anti-narcotics officers intercepted 80 ampoules of pentazocine injection 225grams concealed in cartons heading to Canada.
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