Nigeria: NDLEA Seizes N4.6bn Abandoned Illicit Drugs At Lagos Airport

What the report says

Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said it recovered more than 3.9 million tablets of tramadol-type painkillers and tapentadol at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, in a haul the agency estimated at more than N4.6 billion. According to the report carried by Leadership and distributed by AllAfrica, the drugs were found in four abandoned consignments at the airport’s import shed after no one came forward to claim them.

The agency said three of the shipments contained 900,000 tablets of Tramaking 225mg that had arrived on a RwandAir flight from Bangladesh, while a fourth held 3,000,030 tablets of Tapentadol 250mg that came in on Qatar Airways from Amsterdam. NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi said the consignments had been kept under watch before the formal examination and recovery, which involved customs officers and other relevant stakeholders.

The report also described two related Lagos airport cases. In one, NDLEA intercepted 47,200 tablets of Captagon, an amphetamine-based drug, after arresting a passenger who had arrived from Accra. In another, officers arrested a U.S. returnee in Lekki over alleged possession of Loud, a synthetic cannabis strain. The broader context is Nigeria’s ongoing effort to curb trafficking through airports and other entry points, where concealment methods and transnational routes remain common.