I did it to raise money for my daughter’s exam fees – 56-year-old man arrested with cocaine confesses

National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, arrests a 56-year-old man Lawal Lateef Oyenuga and his recruiter, Wasiu Sanni Gbolahan a.k.a teacher, for drug trafficking.

Spokesperson of the agency, Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, said 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, Ikeja, Lagos.

Lawal had concealed 400g of cocaine in a pair of black palm sandals in this luggage which was detected to contain illicit drugs.

Wasiu Sanni Gbolahan a.k.a 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 palm sandals.

He added that he resorted to the criminal trade to raise money to pay the examination fees for his daughter who is in SS3.

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 Muhammed) to traffic drugs to Dubai.

Bolajoko was arrested on June 27 with 900 grams of cocaine to Dubai while Ademola Kazeem was nabbed on November 10, barely 10 days after he was declared wanted by NDLEA.

A follow-up operation in the early hours of Friday, November 25, led to the arrest of the kingpin, Teacher, who specialises in recruiting mules for drug barons in Lagos and its environs at his residence located in the Ikorodu area of Lagos.

The 64-year-old Wasiu is a housing and property agent, with seven children and four wives, one of whom is now late.