The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has said that its operatives thwarted an attempt by 26-year-old nursing student, Esther Onyinyechi Uzodinma to swallow 76 wraps of cocaine hours before her return flight to her Indian university through the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano.
NDLEA’s director of media and advocacy, Femi Babafemi made this known in a statement yesterday.
Uzodinma, a 200-level nursing student at Noida International University, Uttar Pradesh, India, was scheduled to return to Delhi non Qatar Airways flight 1432 on Friday, 17th January 2025. She was, however, arrested in her room at 11:30 pm on Thursday, 16th January, at Royal Park Hotel Sabon Garin Kano, while awaiting the cocaine consignment she was to ingest before her flight the following morning.
The statement revealed that the organised crime was busted when the NDLEA operatives on patrol along the Okene-Lokoja highway in Kogi State on Thursday, intercepted 31-year-old Cosmas Okorie in a commuter bus coming from Lagos en route to Kano.
According to Babafemi, inside the suspect’s black polythene bag was an audio speaker, which concealed 76 pellets of cocaine weighing 1.340 kilograms that he was going to deliver to Esther in Kano. A swift follow-up operation in Kano led to the arrest of the female nursing student later that same day.
”Esther in her statement, claimed the drug cartel she was working for recruited her in India and paid for her trip to Nigeria to enjoy her Christmas and New Year holidays. To avoid her parents knowing she was in Nigeria, she did not travel to her home state, Imo, but was lodged for two weeks in a hotel in Enugu, from where she was flown to Abuja and then Kano, where she was lodged at Royal Park Hotel to swallow the 76 pellets of cocaine sent to her from Lagos before taking her Qatar Airways flight to India on Friday morning,” the statement reads.
Babafemi further disclosed that the suspect was promised over $5,000 upon successful delivery of the illicit consignment in India.
