NDLEA Nabs NURTW Chairman And Three Others For Drug Trafficking

National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has nabbed Ekiti State National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) chairman and three others for drug trafficking.

Gatekeepers News reports that National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested the Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW, in Ijero local government area of Ekiti state, Babatunde Babade, 45, along with two others; Ilesanmi Shola, 35, and Babajide Johnson, 45, for trafficking illicit drug.

NDLEA’s Director, Media & Advocacy, Femi Babafemi made this known in a statement he signed on Sunday, July 25, 2021.

Following intelligence that the transport union leader was conveying bags of the banned drug in his 1997 model blue Mazda car with registration number: Ekiti JER194 AE from Akure to Ekiti state, Babade was intercepted with 52.5kilograms of skunk in Akure, the Ondo state capital.

After his arrest at about 2 pm on Sunday, July 18, 2021, Babade, popularly called BB, was taken into custody along with others for interrogation.

BB in his statement, admitted he owns the vehicle used for conveying the drug, adding that the car was earlier intercepted by some security agents who detained the two other suspects, his car, and eight bags containing cannabis Sativa while his brother who drove the vehicle fled.

The transport union leader, however, claimed that following his intervention, the security agents released the suspects and his car to him after taking two of the eight bags containing the drug and sixty thousand naira (N60, 000) from him, before he later ran into NDLEA officers while on his way back to Ekiti.

Meanwhile, officers of the Benue state command of the Agency have arrested another suspected interstate drug trafficker, Odinaka Ugwuanyi with 124,000 tablets of Tramadol, Diazepam, and Exol-5, all weighing 22.55 kilograms along Apir road, Makurdi.

The 29-year-old suspect who noted he is from Nsukka local government area of Enugu state was intercepted at about 8 am on Saturday, July 17, 2021, in a commercial vehicle.

Ugwuanyi claimed another passenger he knows who sat next to him in the vehicle dropped the bag containing the drugs with him and fled upon sighting NDLEA officers.

Chairman/Chief Executive of the NDLEA, Mohamed Buba Marwa, has commended the doggedness of the commanders, officers, and men of the Ondo and Benue state Commands of the Agency in the ongoing offensive action against drug barons, traffickers and peddlers.

Marwa charged them along with their colleagues in other commands to remain resolute in the discharge of their constitutional responsibilities.