Five Drug Runners Get Prison Terms, Forfeit Property to State

Nigeria’s anti-narcotics squad has locked up five key players from global crime rings, handing them a combined 21 years behind bars in Lagos. The busts happened at the main airport there, where they tried to smuggle banned substances abroad.

Three men—Olasupo Michael Oladimeji, Muaezee Ademola Ogunbiyi, and Sola Adegoke—got nabbed on 26 August after officers grabbed 17.9 kilograms of cocaine stuffed into cloth and lucky charms bound for Sydney in Australia. A deeper search turned up 20.5 kilograms of a strong cannabis type called Canadian Loud at Ogunbiyi’s home in Lekki, plus a black Range Rover SUV with plates RBC 459 EJ at Adegoke’s place in Ikeja’s upscale area.

The trio faced court on 30 October before a judge in Lagos on five charges. They admitted guilt, and the next day, the judge slapped each with five years in jail with no chance to pay a fine instead—15 years in all. The court also seized the Range Rover and a Toyota Venza from the probe and gave them to the government.

In another bust, two bosses—Obunike Obichukwu and Uzorchukwu Chukwurah—fell on 19 July when agents stopped 2.60 kilograms of cocaine and 27.90 kilograms of tramadol hidden in car parts headed to Gabon. They went before a different Lagos judge on 4 November, owned up to the crime, and each drew three years or a two-million-naira fine. The judge took four million naira that Obunike tried to slip to officers as a bribe.

The squad now hunts not just runners but the planners and money men in these gangs, grabbing their goods to break the chains. This fits a wider push against border drug flows, with the Lagos airport a hot spot for shipments to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Officers there have seized loads of cocaine, painkillers, and weed types this year, including a big cannabis haul masked as tea from Thailand via the UAE in June.