The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency says its officials have intercepted parcels of illicit drugs concealed in a specially constructed compartment of a bus.
Two suspects – Zahradeen Adamu, 27, and Abubakar Usman, 44 – were apprehended in the vehicle coming from Onitsha, Anambra State, en route to Yola, Adamawa State.
NDLEA spokesman Femi Babafemi said on Sunday that the hidden compartment, designed to evade detection, was used to smuggle illegal substances across international borders.
Babafemi also shared videos of the seized contraband, stressing the sophistication of concealment methods deployed by the drug traffickers.
He said for intelligence professionalism of the officials of the agency, how could anyone have imagined that one needs to remove a vehicle’s bumper to discover this specially constructed compartment in the belly of a bus solely for trafficking drugs across borders.
According to the NDLEA spokesman, the anti-narcotics agency arrested four members in intelligence-led operations during which multi-million-naira worth of tramadol pills concealed in the bumper and false bottom of Sienna buses heading to border towns were recovered.
He said the arrest followed weeks of intelligence and surveillance operations by operatives of the Directorate of Intelligence in NDLEA.
Similarly, a second Sienna bus driven by Abba Usman, 48, was also intercepted.
During a search of the two vehicles, specially constructed steel compartments were discovered after the removal of the back bumper, where a total of 190,960 pills of tramadol were concealed and in the space designed to house the spare tyre of the vehicles.
Investigations revealed that an Onitsha, Anambra State-based dealer, Kingsley Mbaeri, was the supplier of the seized tramadol consignment.
A swift follow-up operation led to the arrest of Mbaeri at his Uga Street, Onitsha home on 29th January.
Two vehicles, a Toyota Corolla car marked FGG 948 MF and a Toyota Sienna bus marked GWA 23 HH, were recovered from his house.
