It was a moment of drama at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos when a traveller allegedly caught a staff member of a flight service company called Pathfinder attempting to plant illicit drugs in his luggage.
A viral video shows when the man slapped the Pathfinder staff member and asked him to explain the content of the package while the official knelt and apologised for his crime.
It was gathered that the man who caught the flight service official raised an alarm and informed a popular blog, Sabiradio, of what he discovered the official was doing with his bags.
The viral video shows other airport workers interrogating the flight services official.
When slapped by the man, the flight service tried to explain how someone paid him to find a way to send the drugs to someone outside Nigeria.
Speaking in English and Pidgin English, Sabi Radio quoted the traveller as saying, “Either it is their usual operation to set people up but no, them jam their match today. As I begin razz the whole airport, them know say person de smh.
“That’s how my life I would have gone just like that, una for see my picture everywhere for NDLEA say I smuggle drug for international airport.
“Innocent people are jailed daily through this their methods but they jam their match today, NDLEA personnel were not acting shocked or surprised. Y’all need to be careful at these airports.”
Reacting to the video, an X user, @Gidi_Traffic said, “According to our sources, in cases like these, there’s a standby corrupt NDLEA (National Drug Law Enforcement Agency) operative on the receiving end waiting to arrest the innocent traveller on a lowkey.
“In some instances, the receiver tracks the luggage and takes the merchandise, either by stealing the entire luggage or in some extreme cases, kidnapping, killing the passenger and making it seem like a robbery!
“If the passenger is not lucky and is stopped by security, well then, passengers are unfortunately criminalized, paraded on National TV and legally sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit!
“The Airport CCTV footage could be having selective amnesia and may not help your case.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has said that the man who was apprehended in the viral video for attempting to plant drugs in a traveller’s bag is not their worker.
Reacting to the incident, FAAN in a statement issued by its Director of Public Affairs & Consumer Protection, Mrs Obiageli Orah, confirmed that the suspect is an employee of an aviation services company operating within the airport premises.
Orah added that the officer, who tried to ferry a parcel through the passenger that was going to Accra, Ghana had been arrested and handed over to security operatives for interrogation.
Also, the spokesperson for the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, confirmed to SaharaReporters that the suspect in the video is not a staff member of FAAN but an official of a flight service company he identified as Pathfinder.
Babafemi said, “Not that he planted something in the person’s luggage. What happened is that what they normally do is to approach passengers travelling to help them deliver consignments to some other persons where they are going to and I think that was what happened in this case.
“But without letting the person know, I think like what we have been trying to educate people about on not accepting parcels and packages from people they don’t know, the passenger was vigilant enough to insist on knowing what was inside the parcel before he accepted it.
“Both the consignment and the suspect are already with the NDLEA. We have tested the two substances and formal investigation is still going on but one of the substances tested positive to tramadol and the other one is a supplement. We have arrested a lot of people like that.”
