Officials from the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested 30-year-old Brazilian national Ingrid Benevides at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. She was carrying 30.09 kilograms of heroin, concealed in sealed coffee packages. The estimated street value is over 3 billion naira.
The suspect, a private security officer in Brazil, was arrested on Friday, January 23, 2026, upon her arrival in Abuja on Qatar Airways flight QR1431. The arrest followed surveillance by NDLEA officers based on a tip.
In a statement released on Sunday, agency spokesperson Femi Babafemi said that 21 sealed coffee packages were found during a search of Ms. Benevides’ two pieces of checked luggage. Further examination revealed that the packages contained a white substance, which turned out to be heroin.
According to NDLEA, the seized drugs weighed a total of 30.09 kilograms. This is the largest amount of heroin ever seized at Abuja Airport.
Babafemi added that the suspect stated during her initial questioning that she had brought the drugs into Nigeria under the pretext of going on vacation.
## Other Significant Seizures
In a related operation, NDLEA officers arrested two passengers, Adediran Adedoyin and Afatakpa Ochuko, at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos, on Tuesday, January 20. The passengers were traveling to Istanbul, Turkey.
The suspects were carrying 3,990 tablets of Tapentadol (250 mg) and Tramacam (225 mg), concealed in food items in their luggage.
Meanwhile, acting on reliable intelligence, officers from the Maritime Command of the Department of Defense intercepted a wooden boat carrying 44 large bags of Ghana Loud cannabis, weighing a total of 1,848 kilograms, at Jakande Beach in Lekki, Lagos, early Thursday morning, January 22. The drugs were seized shortly after the boat’s arrival from Ghana.
In Kaduna State, two suspects, 20-year-old Aminu Baba and 28-year-old Abdulrasheed Abubakar, were arrested after two bags containing 140 packages of explosives were intercepted. The bags were recovered from a bus on the Kaduna-Zaria Highway. The suspects were apprehended in follow-up operations in Kano and Kaduna States.
Babafemi stated that further intelligence-driven operations in several states had led to the arrest of numerous suspects and the seizure of significant quantities of illegal drugs, including tramadol, skunk, pentazocine injections, cannabis seeds, and codeine syrup.
According to the NDLEA, these arrests and seizures are part of ongoing efforts to dismantle drug trafficking networks, curb cross-border smuggling, and disrupt the supply of illegal drugs to criminal and terrorist groups nationwide.
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