The Adamawa State Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested 296 drug offenders and seized 3,107.778 kilograms of different illegal drugs from them.
Those arrested comprise 286 males and 11 females.
Ths State Commander of the NDLEA, Femi Agboalu who made the disclosure during a press briefing on Monday to mark the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking, said the arrests and seizures were made between June 2021 and May 2022.
Agboalu revealed that the command secured 51 convictions among those arrested, with 71 cases still pending in courts, a feat which he said earned the Adamawa Command the prize of being the best in terms of convictions of suspects.
The NDLEA commander gave the breakdown of the seized illegal drugs, the highest being Cannabis Sativa: 2,702.167 kg, followed by Tramadol: 146.806 kg, Pentazocine: 124.578 kg, and Codeine-based syrup: 61.440 kg.
The others are Diazepam: 36.116 kg, Exol-5: 29.676 kg, Phenobarbitone – 2.290 kg Rohypnol: 1.473 kg, Methaqualone : 0.227 kg and Cocaine: 0.005 kg.
Agboalu said his Command also confiscated 28 rounds of live ammunition, one locally-made pistol and a military Camouflage knicker.
Giving highlights of those arrested, he said a “drug baron behind the ingenious mode of concealment of 2,197 blocks of Cannabis Sativa weighing 2000.6 kg in a motorized concrete mixer truck, intercepted at Girei LGA on December 2nd 2021” was traced and arrested last month, 25th May, at Akure in Ondo State “and is presently in our custody for prosecution.”
He added that a notorious drug baron in Hong local government area of the state was arrested with 57 compressed blocks of Cannabis Sativa, concealed in the boot of his car on the 16th of June 2022.
“The suspect, Abdullahi Musa a.k.a Yerima Uding was fingered as the mastermind of the mob attack in Hong on 6th October 2020 that led to the burning and death of an NDLEA Operative and another officer was brutally beaten to stupor and had since been bedridden, leading to his permanent incapacitation,” he said.
