The NDLEA commandant at the airport, Ahmadu Garba, in a chat with newsmen, said the seized consignments were imported into the country through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) airline, Etihad Cargo and that the antinarcotic agency is yet to determine the importer of the Tramadol and other banned substance.
Garba said the first batch of the two consignments arrived Nigeria on April 23rd 2018 while the second consignment arrived on April 25th at the airport.
He explained that the two consignments arrived in four waybills while the fifth waybill arrived its command yesterday and that the command only got hold of the consignment today after the owners refused to come forward for clearance.
“We collected the consignments from the Skyway Aviation Handling Limited (SAHCOL) shed today (Thursday) and we got to know of the consignment even before it arrived the country through our foreign intelligence. Since then, we have been monitoring it and waited for either the importer or any clearing agent to come forward for clearance, but no one came. The approved dosage for Tramadol is between 50m and 100m, but what thee importer brought into the country was 250m, which is above the approved milligrams by the government. The total waybills were five.”
He added that the command had made a total seizure of 187.22kgs of illicit drugs between January and April this year. The breakdown of the seizures indicated that cocaine was 1.88kg, heroin; 4.48kg, cannabis Sativa; 15.64kg, methamphetamine; 41.06kg, ephedrine; 89.06kg and, Phenacetin with 8.2k.