Muhammed Abubakar, Reporting
A 63-year-old Chinese national who naturalised in Malaysia is in custody after attempting to smuggle a 31-kilogramme consignment of ‘Canadian Loud’ synthetic cannabis into Nigeria, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has revealed.
Ting Hung Kiong was arrested on Sunday 17 May 2026 at the Terminal 2 Arrival Hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Ikeja, Lagos, following her arrival from Thailand via Dubai on an Emirates Airline flight. The suspect, who claims to work as a caregiver in Malaysia, told investigators that her daughter financed her journey from Malaysia to Thailand and then to Nigeria. She spent two weeks in Thailand before being handed the illicit drugs at the airport there.
In a parallel development, the NDLEA has recovered one of the largest pharmaceutical drug shipments in recent months. On Friday 22 May, customs officials handed over 29 cartons containing 1,825,710 tablets of Tapentadol (250mg) – a powerful opioid – to the agency at the Lagos airport import shed. The consignment, which arrived from India aboard an Emirates Cargo flight, is valued at N2,190,852,000.
Further arrests were made across the country. At the Akanu Ibiam International Airport in Enugu on Wednesday 20 May, a passenger named Onyeka Valentine Emeka excreted 185.36 grammes of cocaine during inward clearance from Sierra Leone via Addis Ababa. The following day at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, 29-year-old building engineer Babatunde Prosper Afekhide was caught attempting to board a flight to Milan, Italy, with 10,280 pills of tramadol and tapentadol concealed in a carton inside his suitcase.
NDLEA operatives also targeted courier services and warehouses. In Lagos, they intercepted 1,174 MDMA (Ecstasy) pills hidden in a bicycle luggage carrier bound for the Netherlands, along with tramadol shipments destined for the United States and the United Kingdom. A raid on the Igwe community in Owan East LGA, Edo state, yielded 59 jumbo bags of skunk (489kg) and 9kg of cannabis seeds.
Elsewhere, Isah Sani, 30, was nabbed on the Zaria-Kano road with 196,000 pills of exol-5, while officers at the Seme border in Badagry recovered 59kg of skunk from a warehouse in Mowo. In Ekiti state, a raid on a warehouse in Ikoyi community, Ikole-Ekiti, led to the seizure of 1,116kg of skunk and the arrest of 54-year-old Ogundana Adebayo Julius.
NDLEA Chairman Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd) commended the various commands for their drug supply reduction efforts, which he said were balanced with War Against Drug Abuse (WADA) sensitisation activities in schools, places of worship and workplaces across the country. ‘Continue to raise the operational bar,’ he charged the officers.
