Drug Dealer Caught with N4.6bn Worth of Cocaine 16 Months After Initial Arrest

Christian Ogbuji, a 48-year-old businessman and ex-convict, has been arrested for the second time by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for cocaine trafficking. After arriving from Uganda on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, Ogbuji was apprehended on May 10, 2023, at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. He was found to have ingested 93 pellets of cocaine weighing nearly 2 kilograms.

Following his arrest, Ogbuji was charged in Federal High Court 12, Abuja, where he was convicted on July 13, 2023. He received a two-year prison sentence but opted to pay a fine of 3 million Naira, alongside forfeiting the seized cocaine, his international passport, and a small amount of cash.

However, the story did not end there. Just 16 months later, on September 18, 2024, Ogbuji was intercepted once again at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos. This time, he was caught attempting to import 19.40 kilograms of cocaine, valued at an astonishing 4.6 billion Naira.

According to NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi, Ogbuji was stopped during the inward clearance of Ethiopian Airlines passengers from Addis Ababa. He had approached a joint examination table with a black traveling bag that had been cleared by an NDLEA operative. In a desperate bid to outsmart the authorities, Ogbuji sneaked back to the carousel area and added a black backpack to his cleared bag.

His plan quickly unraveled when vigilant NDLEA officers conducted a secondary search. Inside the backpack, they discovered a staggering 817 pellets of excreted cocaine, reportedly belonging to various members of a drug cartel.

In his confession, Ogbuji claimed that he had left the backpack as a strategy to evade detection, never anticipating that a secondary search would occur. He admitted to having procured a new international passport to continue his illicit activities.

Babafemi noted that Ogbuji is considered a “unrepentant kingpin” within a network of drug cartels operating across West Africa, linking Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and several other nations, including Benin, Togo, Ghana, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire.