NIGERIAN DRUG RINGS USING CREATIVE TACTICS

Enlist Non-Profile Carriers To Help Smuggle Heroin

Lagos, Nigeria - Disheveled and ashen faced after six weeks in a bare cell,
Adebolanle Adeyemi showed no trace of her former life as one of this city's
"society ladies," an elite hostess whose parties drew well-connected
Nigerians.

In mid-March, after Adeyemi landed at Lagos' airport from Bombay, India,
Nigerian authorities detained her on the basis of a tip. They had her
abdomen X-rayed and spotted a mass of objects. During the next few days in
custody, she expelled 50 plastic pellets filled with heroin worth an
estimated $100,000 on the street.

In an interview at this country's drug enforcement agency headquarters, a
fidgety Adeyemi avoided eye contact and fussed with a scarf covering her
matted hair as she gave her story. She had been given the heroin by Nigerian
men in Bombay, men she said she had never met before.

"My money and my passport were stolen in Bombay and I didn't have anywhere
to go; these people agreed to help me." She said they provided her with a
new passport and in return asked her to take the heroin.

An elite, 48-year-old mother of five, Adeyemi does not fit what used to be
the "profile" of a drug courier. But her arrest here, like that last month
in New York of a 12-year-old Nigerian boy, Prince Nnaedozie Umegbolu,
illustrates that Nigerian smuggling rings are getting more creative about
whom they use to carry drugs, and how they pack them.

Even with smugglers' diversified methods, Nigerian anti-narcotics police
expressed shock at the use of Prince, who was found with 87 heroin-filled
bags in his belly. "That's the first use of a child that we are aware of,"
said Aju Ameh, a spokesman in Lagos for the National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency.

The boy is apparently a member of the Ibo ethnic group, which dominates
Nigeria's southeast. But Ameh said his agency has failed so far to trace the
boy's relatives.

For about two decades - ever since a group of Nigerian naval officers
training in India began smuggling heroin in the early 1980s - this country
has been a major transshipment center from Southeast Asia to the United
States and Europe, according to a November 2001 briefing paper issued by the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA says Nigerian-controlled couriers
smuggle about 30 percent of the heroin sent to the United States.

After 1972, when U.S. and French police dismantled the "French Connection" -
in which New York-based mob families imported heroin via the French
territory of Corsica - new traffickers from abroad began fulfilling U.S.
demand for heroin and cocaine.

Although no heroin or cocaine is produced in this West African nation,
Nigerian criminals have used hustle and business acumen to take control of a
substantial segment of the global drug trade, alongside prominent groups
from Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica and elsewhere.

Under successive corrupt military governments, narcotics trafficking thrived
among a small segment of Nigerians, including powerful businessmen and their
government cronies occupying some of the highest offices in the land.

But with the three-year-old elected government cracking down on the
narcotics trade at the urging of the United States, traffickers have
resorted to ever more ingenious ways to move their wares.

"Women soak it in their hair extensions or their clothes, and some put it in
every conceivable nook and cranny in their bodies, including their private
parts," Ameh said. "Athletes going to the Special Olympics have been caught
carrying drugs in their wheelchairs."

Traffickers now try to recruit people of virtually any description, from
teenage American girls to U.S. military personnel, according to the DEA.
"Some Nigeria-based traffickers conduct 'training schools' that teach
couriers how to avoid the suspicions of customs officials," according to the
November DEA paper.

The role of women in the drug trade has been increasing for years. A DEA
investigation in the mid-1990s of a Nigerian-based group that smuggled
heroin from Thailand to the Chicago area found that 15 of the ring's 22
operatives were women.

Last year, the Nigerian drug enforcement agency charged nearly 100 women
with trying to smuggle drugs, mostly heroin. This year, those arrested
included a 64-year-old grandmother and a flight attendant for Nigerian
Airways.

In particular, traffickers have turned of late to using older women,
observers of the narcotics trade here said.

"In this society, we revere women, children and the elderly," said Emeka
Ibemere, an investigative reporter who has followed Adeyemi's case for
Tempo, a weekly news magazine. "The drug dealers are attuned to how the
society operates."

Ameh said police agencies can seldom get the "mules" - those who carry the
drugs across borders - to identify those they work for. The traffickers
often warn that mules' loved ones will be killed if they talk.

While Adeyemi says she was a pawn in the high-stakes world of drug
smuggling, Ibemere said he has found she was a sophisticated traveler who
had made several trips to India.

"Technically, she deals in importing lace for women's clothes," Ibemere
said. "But she is known in the community for dealing in luxury cars and
throwing big parties where she, the rich and the powerful make deals with
each other."