*jona:

[b]NDLEA beams searchlight on Brazil-Nigeria route…arrests six suspects
National News Dec 20, 2009 By Albert Akpor

LAGOS — THE National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, said weekend that it was beaming its searchlight on Brazil-Nigeria route, stressing that some of the suspects arrested over the weekend with hard rugs were coming into the country via Brazil.

The new Commander of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Alhaji Hamza Umar, said he was poised to make the nation’s gateway hot for drug traffickers and their barons.

The commander who made the revelation at the arrest of five suspects who came into the country from Brazil, said he was shocked that in spite of the efforts aimed at discouraging traffickers on the illicit drug deal, they were not perturbed. He said the surveillance measure put in place moments he assumed duties at the airport had started yielded positive results with the arrest of six suspected drug traffickers that attempted to smuggle 6.397 kilograms of cocaine. Five of the arrested suspects were coming from Brazil while one was arrested on his way to Pakistan.

Hamza said the decision to beam searchlight on Brazil followed the revelation that coca plant from where cocaine is derived is produced in Brazil.

He said: “Brazil, like other drug producing countries, is crucial [/b] to us because they are high risk areas. The Agency has an effective control mechanism to detect traffickers.”

On Pakistan, he said. “Pakistan is a drug producing country. What they produce there is opium; they are now taking cocaine there in exchange for heroin. Though it is strange, but we were not caught napping.”

The six suspects that tested positive when scanned with the United States donated body scanners were Onu Sunday, 30 (485 grammes), Ikeagwuonwu Ikemefuna Benneth,44 (1.20kgs), Nweke Francis Sunday, 31 (692 grammes) and Kennedy Ifeanyi Okonkwo, 35 (1.415 kgs), Aneke Chidi Brown, 31 (1.465 kgs) and Nwafor Francis Obinna, 31 (1.140 kgs).

They all admitted to the crime, claiming that financial hardship drove them into drug trafficking.