Former beauty queen wanted for drugs offence surrenders to NDLEA

Former beauty queen wanted for drugs offence surrenders to NDLEA

Former beauty queen wanted for drugs offence surrenders to NDLEA. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has announced that former beauty queen, Oluwadamilola Aderinoye, has surrendered to her place of employment in Lagos. The agency accused the former Miss Commonwealth Nigeria Culture 2015/2016 of going into hiding after being placed on a wanted list eight months ago.

The agency’s spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, said Aderinoye was alerted after she fled during a raid on her Lekki home on January 24, 2024. Babafemi said among the items seized from the residence were 606 grams of Canadian Loud, synthetic cannabis strains, digital scales, a large quantity of plastic pharmaceutical packaging, a black RAV 4 SUV marked Lagos KSF 872 GQ and her picture frames.

“A wanted former beauty queen, Queen Aderinoye Christmas, also known as Queen Oluwadamilola Aderinoye, has surrendered to the agency’s Lagos Command after about eight months in hiding,” Babafemi said. “She was declared wanted by the agency in January after fleeing from her residence in Lekki, Lagos State when operatives of the NDLEA on Wednesday, January 24, raided her residence in Oral, Lekki, following credible suspicions that they had received information that she was dealing illegal drugs. .

“The suspect was Miss Commonwealth Nigeria Culture 2015/2016 and founder of the Queen Christmas Foundation. During the search by property control officers, 606 grams of Canadian Loud, synthetic cannabis strains, digital scales, a quantity of plastic pharmaceutical packaging, a black RAV 4 SUV marked Lagos KSF 872 GQ and her photo frames were seized from the house among others.

“The suspect claimed to have been hiding out in Akure, Ondo State since January when he evaded arrest in Lekki Lagos but surrendered to authorities on Wednesday, August 28.” Babafemi said operatives of the agency seized a total of 31,124,600 Tramadol 225mg tablets and bottles of codeine syrup with a street value of over N17,932,200,000 at the Port Harcourt Seaport Complex, Onne, Rivers State, and Tin Can Seaport, Lagos.

“The seizures were made after the agency received intelligence on the movement of the consignment from the port of origin in India, which prompted a call for a joint investigation with the Nigerian Customs Service and other partner security agencies into a full inventory of containers on the watch list,” the report said. He added. A breakdown of the seizures, he said, revealed that 350,000 bottles of codeine syrup were seized from two containers at Tin Can Port, Lagos on August 29 and 30, 2024. “The two containers contained 175,000 bottles of opioids each. At the Port Harcourt Port Complex, Onne, NDLEA operatives on Thursday, August 29, seized a total of 447 cartons of Tramadol 225mg containing 29.84 million tablets of opioids and 380,000 bottles of Codeine Syrup from three containers. The Tramadol supplies were manufactured under various brand names including Royal Tapetador, Carisoprodol 225mg and Royal Tramadol Hydrochloride 225mg,” the statement added. The following day, Babafemi said three more containers that were on the NDLEA watch list were subject to joint inspection.

He added that a total of 3,030 cartons of Codeine Syrup containing 554,600 bottles of opioids were seized at the end of the operation. This brings the total number of codeine bottles seized in Onne, Rivers and Tin Can, Lagos to 1,284,600 with a total street value of N8,992.2 million, while the seizure of Tramadol totals 29,840,000 tablets with a value of N8,940 million,” he added. Similarly, he noted that on August 27, NDLEA operatives arrested one suspect, Eze Emekan Don, at Port Harcourt International Airport in Rivers State, as he attempted to board a Kronos Airlines flight to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Concealed in his luggage were 1,490 Tramadol tablets packaged as cosmetics of various brands. Similarly in Lagos, Babafemi noted that over 1,122 kilograms of cannabis was seized from one suspect, Mustapha Ibrahim, who was arrested on August 26 along Orchid Road, Ajah, Lagos, adding that “816 kilograms of the same psychotropic drug” was also recovered from the possession of the fugitive suspect from the same location on the same day.

” In Niger State, he said, NDLEA operatives on August 26 arrested a suspect, Friday Gabriel, along Minna-Suleja road while transporting 1,900 capsules of Tramadol, 300 bottles of Codeine Syrup and 600 packets of Exol-5 tablets. “Similarly, in Bauchi State, operatives on Saturday, August 31, arrested two suspects, Garba Muhammed, 35, and Usman Yakubu Shehu, 31, along Bauchi-Gombe road and intercepted 308 blocks of cannabis weighing 246 kilograms, which were being transported concealed in a fake compartment of a J5 bus marked URM 38 ZY from Edo State,” he explained.