By EVELYN USMAN
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has foiled attempts by terrorist gangs to export drugs from the Middle East, to bandits and other criminals in Nigeria, following the interception of 451,807 tablets of suspected Amphetamine (Captagon) at the Apapa Ports in Lagos.
The drugs estimated at N5.8 billion were concealed inside rotor coils of machines reportedly built specifically to export the drugs into Nigeria.
The Chairman/ Chief Executive Officer of the NDLEA, Brig. General Buba Marwa(retd) who made the disclosure in Lagos today, informed that the feat was achieved through information by the agency’s international partners.
The illicit drugs according to Marwa, passed through three countries and was translated into a North African country.
He stated that the highly addictive pill, which is widely available across the Middle East, produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing them to stay awake for days.
In addition, he said, it makes the users fearless and predisposes them to reckless action that puts the lives of people around them in jeopardy.
According to him, ” What should give any discerning Nigerian a nightmare concerning this drug is the fact that its production and sale is controlled by militias and large criminal groups in the Middle East.
“Beyond any doubt, Captagon has been linked to the escalation of the Syrian Civil War. A lot of seizures have been made since 2017, mostly in the Arabian Peninsula, and in Italy and Turkey, and the point of origination, almost all the time, were traced back to Syria and Lebanon.
This gave rise to the theory that ISIS is behind the production and sale of Captagon as a means of generating funds for weapons and combatants, and for use as a stimulant to keep them fighting. Lest we forget, Captagon was the name of the drug found on the phone of the French-Tunisian terrorist who killed 84 civilians in France on Bastille Day in 2016. That is the drug we have on our hands now.
“If these facts are not grim enough, we should all remember a lesson from history, when in World War Two, Nazi Germany wreaked havoc across Europe with chemically-enhanced soldiers that the combined forces of Europe could not tame.
With the official endorsement of the use of Pervatin, a brand of methamphetamine, which belongs to the same family group as amphetamine, the Nazi fighting forces were transformed into fearless and berserk soldiers whose ferocity and reckless abandonment could not be matched by the forces of invaded countries.
Thus one country after the other fell to the Nazis, and history recorded that ignominious cruelty and barbarism were unleashed on conquered territories by drug-addicted soldiers of the Third Reich.
“This is the same condition we have presently with insurgents, bandits, cultists, robbers, kidnappers and herders spilling rampaging across the country.
Given the dark and dangerous background of Captagon, it’s not difficult to guess correctly that the destination for the seized drug is none other than the camps of insurgents and bandits all over the country”.
Explaining how the illicit drugs were intercepted Marwa said the agency received information from its international partners six months ago, on the shipment of illicit narcotics to Nigeria from the Middle East through the Apapa port.
He said, ” We made the first attempts to examine the container on Thursday, August 26, 2021, and what we found inside the container were three pieces of marble polishing machines, otherwise called sanders.
“Further scrutiny on Monday, August 31, with the NDLEA sniffer dogs turned up a positive indication on the rotor coil of one of the three machines.
The next day, Wednesday, September 1, 18,560 tablets of drug suspected to be Amphetamine (Captagon) weighing 3.2kg was found deeply concealed in one of the coils.
” On Thursday, September 2, 2021, the other two machines were dismantled, and in all, a total of 451, 807 tablets, weighing 74.119 kilograms were discovered hidden inside their rotor coils.
Going by the street value of about $25 per tablet, the importer would have raised $11.3million, which is equivalent to N5.8 billion.
“Imagine the impact of this drug in the hands of criminal gangs or a fraction of the profit from its sale being used to fuel criminalities across the country, we can think of our worst-case scenarios and they will still be farther from the repercussions that could be unleashed on the country.
” TIt may interest you to know that, as far as we know, this is the first time this drug is being brought into any African country South of the Sahara”, Marwa stated. (Vanguard)
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