Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on Sunday said it has intercepted consignments of captagon, widely known as ‘Jihadi drug’ and millions of opioid pills worth over N6.2 billion at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja Lagos.
Femi Babafemi, NDLEA Director of Media and Advocacy, said the captagon shipment was seized at the Lagos airport on Saturday 22nd August 2026 following the arrest of a 49-year-old cross-border kingpin Akinbile Kazeem Aikins, who arrived from Accra Ghana aboard an African World Airlines flight.
The NDLEA revealed that a search of his carton of local bathing soap, popularly called “Ghana Soap,” led to the recovery of 47,200 pills of the illicit amphetamine drug worth over N1.5 billion concealed within blocks of soap.
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The deadly drugs, Captagon, which is also notoriously dubbed the ‘Jihadi drug’ for its use in funding extremist activities in conflict zones, was first intercepted in Nigeria by NDLEA in September 2021 at the Apapa port in Lagos.
Akinbile in his confessional statement, claimed that he was meant to deliver the consignment in the North.
The anti- narcotics agency also intercepted no fewer than 3,900,030 tablets of Tramaking 225mg and Tapentadol 250mg, with a combined gross weight of 2,787.40 kilograms and more than N4.6 billion in street value, at the Lagos port
The drugs were recovered from four abandoned consignments at the import shed of the MMIA.
The agency revealed that three of the consignments, comprising 900,000 tablets of Tramaking (815.40kg), arrived aboard RwandAir flights From Bangladesh, while a fourth, comprising 3,000,030 tablets of Tapentadol (1,972kg), arrived on Qatar Airways from Amsterdam.
The shipments, which had been placed under close watch after no one showed up to claim them, were formally retrieved after a joint examination by NDLEA officers, Customs and other stakeholders on Friday 28th August.
A 31-year-old US-returnee, Sowunmi David Oludotun was arrested by NDLEA operatives at Ikate area of Lekki after he showed up to take delivery of 3.350 kilograms of Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis imported from the United Kingdom.
In Rivers state, NDLEA operatives raided the notorious Abuja Down/Up area of Port Harcourt where they recovered a fireproof iron safe among other items.
When the safe was cracked open with a welding machine on Tuesday 25th August, 237 grams of colorado; 316 grams of cocaine, and 10 grams of heroin were recovered from it.
Babafemi said three suspects, namely; Oyedele Daniel, 42; Taye Saliu, 36; and Kehinde Saliu, 36, were on Friday 28th August nabbed at Ipele-Idoani road, in Ondo state with a total of 728kg skunk recovered from their truck marked KRE 120 XB.
Two other suspects: Uche Joseph, 35, and Godwin Umeh, 21, were arrested at Aponmu forest with 341kg of same substance on Wednesday 26th August.
“In Delta state, over 176,000 pills of assorted opioids including tramadol, molly and others were recovered from two interdiction operations in parts of the state between Wednesday 26th and Friday 28th August.”
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