Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have arrested a 41-year-old Canadian national, Adrienne Munju, at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos.
She was arrested on Thursday, October 3, for allegedly attempting to smuggle a significant amount of ‘Canadian Loud,’ a potent strain of synthetic cannabis, into Nigeria.
NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, revealed the arrest in a statement on Sunday.
According to Babafemi, Munju was apprehended during a routine inspection of passengers arriving on a KLM flight from Canada at Terminal 1 of the Lagos airport.
“During a joint examination of her three bags, Adrienne, who was visiting Nigeria for the first time, was found with 74 parcels of the illegal substance, weighing a total of 35.20 kilograms, concealed in two of her bags,” Babafemi said.
In her confession, Munju disclosed that she had been recruited to transport the drugs through an online platform, with the promise of receiving 10,000 Canadian dollars upon delivering the package successfully in Lagos.
She explained that she accepted the offer to fund her ongoing master’s degree programme in Canada.
In a separate operation, NDLEA officers at the Port Harcourt Ports in Onne, Rivers State, seized 13,298,000 pills of various opioids, including Tramadol, Tramaking Quick Action Tramadol, Tamol-X, Royal Tapentadol, and Carisoprodol, as well as 338,253 bottles of codeine-based cough syrup.
The total street value of the drugs is estimated to be over N9 billion. The contraband was recovered during a joint examination of three containers arriving from India on October 2 and 3, 2024, conducted by NDLEA, Nigerian Customs, and other port officials.
