Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) carried out a surprising operation on the night of Friday, 21st July 2023. They apprehended a notorious drug kingpin, Charles Uwagbale, known for sponsoring young Nigerians to traffic class A drugs to Europe, particularly Italy. The NDLEA stormed his hotel room in Okota while he was preparing a recruited courier, Uju Dominic, to swallow 93 pellets of cocaine meant for distribution in Italy.

The 48-year-old drug kingpin had recruited Uju Dominic, 35, from Italy, with a deal to come to Nigeria, ingest 100 pellets of cocaine on Friday 21st July, and return to Italy on Saturday 22nd July. However, the NDLEA had been monitoring their activities based on credible intelligence and successfully arrested both individuals while they were in the process of the drug transaction. They recovered a total of 93 wraps of cocaine with a weight of 1.427 kilograms.

Prior to this operation, on Thursday 20th July, the Lagos State Command of the NDLEA had raided Akala in Mushin area, where they discovered and seized 37.5kg of cannabis from the home of a fleeing suspect.

In another significant development, an attempt to smuggle 98 cartons containing Five Million One Hundred and Twenty-Two Thousand Nine Hundred (5,122,900) pills of Tramadol 225mg, valued at about Three Billion Seven Hundred Million Naira (N3.7 billion), into Nigeria through the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, was thwarted. This accomplishment was attributed to the strong collaboration between men of the Nigeria Customs Service and NDLEA officers at the airport, as well as those at the DHL cargo warehouse. Preliminary investigations revealed that the consignments were imported from India and Pakistan, with some of them destined for Freetown, Sierra Leone.