As Nigeria continues to seek effective measures to battle the use of the nation’s airports to traffic drugs, Lagos Airport commander, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Garba Ahmadu is calling for more personnel, advance passenger information and on-the-spot gadgets to tackle the menace.
He said this while disclosing the steps the agency has taken to check trafficking in narcotics after the Zainab incident in Kano.
It is a race against time as drug traffickers keep conniving with some ground handling workers, airport and airline staff to smuggle narcotics.
Nigerians will not forget in a haste Zainab Aliyu and how her ordeal was not just scary but embarrassing.
Some have blamed the role insider threats and obsolete scanners for undetected passage of drugs at the Lagos airport.
National Drug Law Enforcement Agency arrested 93 passengers in 2018. A breakdown shows that 77 male and 16 female were involved.
From January to April 2019, 30 passengers were caught, among whom were 25 male and 5 female.
Statistics also indicate that 22 arrests were made from inbound while 51 were for outbound flights. From January 2019 to April, the agency made 4 inbound and 19 outbound arrests at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos.
