By Olayemi Esan
Officers of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency have arrested the
Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers in Ijero local government area of Ekiti State.
Babatunde Babade, 45, was arrested along with two others; Ilesanmi Shola, 35, and Babajide Johnson, 45, for trafficking illicit drug.
Director, Media and Advocacy of the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi in a statement on Sunday said the transport union leader was caught with 52.5kilograms of skunk in Akure, the Ondo state capital following intelligence that he 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, popularly called BB, has been taken into custody along with others soon after his arrest for interrogation.
In a confessional statement, he has admitted to own the vehicle used for conveying the drug.
The transporter also stated that the car was earlier intercepted by some security agents who detained the two other suspects alongside the car and eight bags containing cannabis sativa while his brother who drove the vehicle fled.
He 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.
Similarly, officers of the Benue State command of the agency have also intercepted another suspected interstate drug trafficker, 29-year-old Odinaka Ugwuanyi along Apir Road in Makurdi with 124,000 tablets of Tramadol, Diazepam and Exol-5, all weighing 22.55 kilograms.
The suspect who was arrested at about 8am on Saturday in a commercial vehicle said he hailed from Nsukka local government area of Enugu state.
He however claimed that another passenger who sat next to him in the vehicle dropped the bag containing the drugs with him and fled upon sighting NDLEA officers.
Chairman and Chief Executive of the NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd) has commended the doggedness of the officers and men of Ondo and Benue state Commands for their offensive actions against drug barons, traffickers and peddlers.
He charged them to remain resolute in the discharge of their constitutional responsibilities to rid the nation of drug peddlers.