The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has apprehended a 38-year-old South African woman, Will Ann, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for allegedly attempting to smuggle 5.75 kilograms of heroin into Nigeria while travelling with her three-year-old son.
According to the NDLEA, the suspect was arrested on Monday, July 6, 2026, during the inward clearance of passengers aboard Qatar Airways Flight QR1433 from Doha.
The agency said the suspect allegedly concealed 14 large blocks of heroin in two suitcases and initially denied travelling with any checked-in luggage.
In a statement released on Sunday by the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, the anti-narcotics agency said its operatives established that the baggage tags matched the claim tags attached to the suspect’s passport, prompting her to admit ownership of the bags.
The statement read, “Though she initially denied travelling with check-in bags, after operatives were able to quickly establish that the two bags containing the drugs had tags which tallied with the claim tags attached to her passport, she recanted and admitted ownership of the bags, adding that she forgot she checked in the two bags.”
The agency mentioned that the suspect claimed she travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja.
NDLEA further claimed that intelligence suggested she was a member of a multinational drug trafficking organization operating along the Cambodia-South Africa border with her spouse and collaborator, Jan Coenraad De Jager.
In a separate operation, NDLEA agents at Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed International Airport detained Onyechere Chinadu, a 48-year-old commercial motorbike rider who came from Madagascar via Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft.
According to the bureau, an initial check of his rucksack turned up 87 wraps of methamphetamine disguised in clothes.
According to the statement, the suspect admitted that he worked as an okada rider in Lagos for 15 years before being recruited into cocaine trafficking by a Ugandan accomplice.
“He said he ingested the recovered pellets of methamphetamine in Uganda before embarking on his planned journey to Madagascar to deliver the drug consignment,” the statement said.
The NDLEA disclosed that after the suspect was denied entry into Madagascar, his sponsor allegedly rerouted him to Lagos, where he was arrested.
The agency mentioned that the suspect was placed under observation because he could not state the exact number of pellets he had swallowed. Between his arrest and July 11, he excreted 13 additional pellets, bringing the total recovery to 100 wraps of methamphetamine weighing 1.715 kilograms.
