The agency’s spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, said in a statement on Sunday that Lawal, who was headed to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, via Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airways flight, was arrested on Thursday, November 24, at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos, along with his recruiter, Wasiu Sanni Gbolahan, a.k.a. “Teacher”.
Lawal had concealed 400g of cocaine in a pair of black palm sandals in this luggage, which was detected to contain illicit drugs.
Lawal’s recruiter, Teacher, revealed that he was first given some pellets of cocaine to swallow, but when he couldn’t, he was given the ones concealed in the sandals.
Lawal, while being paraded, said that he resorted to the criminal trade to raise money to pay his daughter’s SS3 examination fee.
The NDLEA linked Wasiu to some previous attempts to traffic cocaine to Saudi Arabia and Dubai, UAE. He was named as the one who recruited a BRT driver, Bolajoko Muyiwa Babalola, for Lagos socialite and owner of Adekaz Hotels, Alhaji Ademola Afolabi Kazeem (a.k.a. Alhaji Abdallah Kazeem Muhammad), to traffic drugs to Dubai.
Bolajoko was arrested on June 27 with 900 grams of cocaine en route to Dubai, while Ademola Kazeem was nabbed on November 10, barely 10 days after he was declared wanted by the NDLEA.
A follow-up operation in the early hours of Friday, November 25, led to the arrest of the kingpin, Teacher, who specializes in recruiting mules for drug barons in Lagos and its environs, at his residence located in the Ikorodu area of Lagos.
