Oluwadamilola Aderinoye, an ex-beauty queen and the 2015 Miss Commonwealth Nigeria Culture, has surrendered to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) after evading capture for eight months.
The agency confirmed in its weekly update on Sunday that Aderinoye reported to its Lagos Command on August 28.
Queen Aderinoye, as she is popularly known, fled her residence in the Oral Estate of Lekki, Lagos, on January 24, following a raid by NDLEA operatives.
The raid, conducted with credible intelligence, revealed her alleged involvement in illicit drug activities.
The operatives recovered 606 grams of Canadian Loud, a synthetic strain of cannabis, along with an electronic weighing scale, large quantities of drug packaging materials, and a black RAV 4 SUV with Lagos license plate KSF 872 GQ.
The NDLEA disclosed that Aderinoye had been hiding in Akure, Ondo State, since her escape but eventually surrendered to the agency on Wednesday, August 28.
In a related development, the NDLEA also reported the interception of a massive haul of illicit drugs. The agency seized 31,124,600 pills of Tramadol 225mg and bottles of codeine-based syrup worth over N17.9 billion in street value from the Port Harcourt Port Complex, Onne, Rivers State, and the Tincan Seaport in Lagos.
The seizures were a result of intelligence on the movement of shipments from India, leading to a thorough examination of the watch-listed containers by the NDLEA, the Nigerian Customs Service, and other security agencies.
Among the recovered items were 350,000 bottles of codeine-based syrup from Tincan port in Lagos and 447 cartons of Tramadol 225mg, containing 29,840,000 pills, from the Port Harcourt Port Complex.
Additional seizures on August 30 included 3,030 cartons of codeine syrup containing 554,600 bottles, bringing the total to 1,284,600 bottles with a street value of N8.9 billion. The combined value of Tramadol seized amounted to N8.94 billion.
