Demand for Tramadol triples amount of drugs seized at Lagos airport

Demand for Tramadol has tripled the amount of drugs seized by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) Lagos.

 
Speaking with journalist yesterday, Garba Ahmadu, NDLEA commander at the Lagos Airport, said 4668.880kg of drugs were seized from January till July 2018.

 
Ahmadu explained that the quantum of seizure made this year had almost tripled compared with what was seized last year as a result of the demand for Tramadol and the relationships NDLEA had had with its international counterparts.

 
“The sum total of what the command has been able to seize from beginning of the year till date is 4668.880kg. This includes cocaine 16.06kg, heroin 7.5kg, mixture of cocaine and heroin 6.260kg, cannabis sativa 15.64kg, methamphetamine 42.88kg, ephedrine 119.46kg, tramadol 4,449.9kg and phenecetin 11.18kg”.

 
“The numbers of persons arrested with seized drugs are 43, comprising 38 males and five females,” he said.
He further disclosed that the illegal mode of taking these drugs out of the country include the use of false bottom, electronics, stocking drugs inside foodstuff and the involvement of people that work at the airport.

 
He noted that the involvement of airport workers was becoming more pronounced and this could be because of low pay or greed on the part of those involved.

 
He said: “Accomplices come from workers at the airport, cleaners and airline staff. The recent arrest we had, we did not have any direct involvement of any of the staff of the ground handling companies but we have other people that work at the airport that are accomplices. In one way or the other these people facilitate the process.

 
“It has always been our position that before you employ, you need to vet and after employing them, there should be a periodic vetting of all people that are working at the airport.

 
“We encourage the airport authority to pay the airport security staff good salaries just to encourage them because when you deny them good salaries and they cannot afford to live within the airport environment, they become venerable to obnoxious activities.”

 
He noted that every day, NDLEA gets passenger information and does profiling. “I have a good number of officials that are exposed to some levels of training. We know how to profile and what to look for. We have some targeting list before passengers even get to the airport.

 
“There are some visual profiling we do in the airport. These officers see some indicators on the passengers and that will prompt them to check further on selected passengers. Most of the arrests are as a result of the profiling we do at the office and the airport,” he said.