Do you know what it means to find the severed heads of cats neatly arranged in trays at a market square? Only the initiated know. If curiosity pushes you further, speak to officers of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). They have seen things—unspeakable things. They have seen cat heads openly displayed for sale. Won ti ri ori ologbo l’ate. One day, one discovery. A signpost into a very dark world.
Please follow me on this excursion on what happens from skunk farms in Colorado to Nigeria’s street corners:
Skunk inside plantain chips packaging.
Ketamine, ecstasy and tramadol pills hidden in coffee satchels and book parcels.
Cocaine concealed deep in a woman’s sacred place, yes, and then more in her footwear.
95 wraps of cocaine in a 62-year-old man’s stomach.
More skunk hidden inside rechargeable electrical bulbs.
Metamphetamine (Meth) concealed in giant music speakers.
Tramadol tablets packed inside car spare tyre, car doors.
And this!
Illicit ‘orisirisi’ hidden inside frozen snails.
Mind-bending drugs do to society what welders do with wrought iron. They bend reason, warp senses, destroy destinies and drag the bizarre into the open.
Seriously, if drugs had legs, they would be the most restless travellers in Nigeria. They travel by every means of transport available, including backpacks and innocent-looking lunch boxes of dispatch riders. If, for instance, cocaine, skunk and meth had mouths, they would be screaming, “Anywhere but there!” I mean, they get pushed into all kinds of hot, even smelly places. Because honestly, where haven’t drugs been found?
Once upon a time, when NDLEA said it had made a seizure, Nigerians pictured the usual suspects: airports, seaports, border towns, maybe one dark bush path where a nervous courier, whose village people’ had pursued to Lagos bumps into an NDLEA checkpoint, sweating like a Christmas goat. Those were the innocent days. Today, NDLEA press releases read like stuff from a badly managed magician show. Drugs are no longer just smuggled; they are imaginatively hidden.
Creativity has gone virally criminal or criminally viral because more and more people are becoming mules, couriers. More and more colorful drugs are getting into Nigeria and are being distributed with devil-may-care daring but foolhardy people. The recruitment drive must be something to be researched too. How is it that every week NDLEA reports its catch, a new arrest, complete with names photographs and visuals, right the following week, a new guy is caught with another dangerous drug hidden in another creative place? Every day, every week? Does Nigeria even have enough jail space to keep these people? Why is it that the arrests are not stopping this evil business? Whose children, fathers, mothers, even grandparents are these mules?
These are some of the questions that run around my head every weekend. I read those statements from NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi.
For years, NDLEA officers have watched suitcases at the airports like hawks with binoculars. Drugs inside bags? Old news. Drugs sewn into clothes? Been there. Drugs swallowed, packed in the stomach like export goods? Sadly familiar.
But today’s smugglers have moved on to bigger things. They have moved to more irreverent locations.
For as long as mind-bending substances are circulated by dry-eyed, mean men and women, there will be no real development in Nigeria.
Yes, drugs have turned up inside holy books. Yes, holy books. The irony and anger alone would power the national grid. Cocaine tucked neatly between pages of prayer, as if divine intervention would make NDLEA officers look the other way. Maybe the smugglers thought, “Surely God will understand.” No such luck.
NDLEA witchcraft understood and swooped in. How do they even do it, like they have ‘inside eyes’ or there is GPS installed inside the officers upon graduation from training college?
They see drugs hidden inside food items. Not just any food—our food. Yams, plantains, garri sacks, crayfish containers. Things your mother sends you from the village. Imagine opening a bag of foodstuff with joy, only to discover it carries enough illicit substances to rent a shop and put them evil things on display, if it were possible.
The drug trade in Nigeria now is free for all. Years ago, mules we beautiful girls believed maybe to have sexy ways to hoodwink airport officers. Not any longer. There is no age or gender barrier. There was Mama Kerosine, real name, Fatima Ilori, a 65-year-old female drug kingpin (also known as Mama Kerosine or Mamak Rousin), arrested in the Onireke/Elekuro area of Ibadan, Oyo State. The NDLEA found on her 238.4 kg of skunk, a cousin of cannabis. There was also a Remi Bamidele (45), arrested at Sasa, Ibadan, with over 10kg of various cannabis strains, including Colorado, Scottish Loud, Ghana Loud, and Canadian Loud. Read that again. I did not even know there are so many ‘Louds’. Maybe there is even Nigeria Loud.
And now to the two cases that informed this piece.
A suspected drug kingpin operating a “Colorado” synthetic cannabis lab at Badeku in Ibadan, Oyo State was nabbed recently. According to NDLEA officers, in his lab, they found and seized ‘precursor chemicals and skunk production paraphernalia’. Yeah, a skunk production laboratory. He was manufacturing what would kill, maim and steal other people’s joy and future. He was not a retailer or wholesaler. He was a manufacturer. He would have employees, marketers and supply chain.
The second guy is a 62-year-old drug dealer, Nwabueze Nicholas Izueke, who was arrested at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport with 95 jumbo wraps of cocaine concealed in his stomach. He is 62, probably with married children and a couple of grandchildren. He is probably a titled man or a deacon or some sort of church leader. When I saw the report, I felt like crying, for him, for all of us. I thought of how long he could spend in jail. He is eight years short of 70. What kind of life will he have in there? Then I thought of how many lives his past jumbo trips had ruined and I became even sadder.
Take a moment to think of all the angles of these two businessmen, how long they have been at it, and the hundreds of them still hiding in dark places and manufacturing skunk and packaging Loud.
Once upon a time, checking car boots was enough. NDLEA has since learned that smugglers think three steps ahead and one step sideways.
These days, drugs have been found inside fuel tanks—yes, fuel tanks. Because why not turn a car into a rolling chemistry experiment? Others were hidden in the dashboards, car doors, spare tyres, and shock absorbers. Vehicles are no longer means of transportation; they are mobile drug warehouses, stash houses on wheels.
Some smugglers have been known to hide drugs inside coffins. Coffins. The dead, apparently, are not exempt from being unwilling accomplices. Shouldn’t all of these force the nation to pause and ask deep questions about morals, desperation, and how far some people will go to make money?
Nigeria is an agricultural nation, but NDLEA’s discoveries have added an unexpected crop to the list of what we plant. There are cannabis farms tucked away in forests, plantations hidden among legitimate crops, fields that look peaceful until you realize they are not cassava or corn farms. They are rogue farms, desecrating the soil that should grow yam and cocoa yam, cocoa and kola nut.
More saddening still are the offices, corporate spaces and even homes where these evil transactions are going on even as you read this. Drugs have been found inside bedrooms, kitchens, wardrobes, and ceilings. Not just hidden but stored with intention. Some homes function like quiet distribution centres, blending into neighbourhoods where everyone greets everyone and jog together.
Even offices have not been spared. Corporate respectability has occasionally turned out to be just a costume, with drugs hidden in filing cabinets, behind shelves, or inside office equipment. It turns out that not all paperwork is paper. Some are paperwork to wrap colorado and skunk.
But why won’t these dark evil stop? This thing is real evil, deep, present danger with long scrawny demonic finger reaching out to destroy the tomorrow of every user and cause pain, indescribable sorrow to the friends and family of victims.
How is it that some people are comfortable building their wealth and empire on the tears and terror of the drug business? They build places of worship and hospitals, set up foundations and charities to ‘help the less-privileged’. They destroy millions and pay the school fees of a hundred and continue as if that will somehow wash away the evil they inflict on the world.
For as long as mind-bending substances are circulated by dry-eyed, mean men and women, there will be no real development in Nigeria. We can amend the electoral act from now till hell freezes over, buy new equipment to fight terror, those whose minds are bent, young and old, will continue to bend our destinies.
*Egbemode ([email protected])
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