When grandpas, grandmas become cocaine smugglers

The image of an elderly grandmother or grandfather being led away by anti-narcotics officers over alleged involvement in drug trafficking is one that challenges conventional perceptions of who participates in the illicit drug trade.

Yet, a succession of arrests involving people in their 60s, 70s and even older has brought an uncomfortable question to the fore: Why are people who should ordinarily be enjoying their retirement years becoming involved in the dangerous business of transporting, storing and distributing illicit drugs?

In Nigeria, the figures supplied by Femi Babafemi, spokesperson of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) suggest that the phenomenon deserves closer attention.

The agency arrested 240 persons aged 60 and above for drug-related offences in 2025, comprising 191 men and 49 women. Between January and August 2026, another 164 elderly suspects, including 128 men and 36 women, were arrested.

The figures bring the total number of elderly persons arrested within the 20-month period to 404.

Men accounted for the overwhelming majority, representing approximately 80 per cent of the arrests in 2025 and 78 per cent in the first eight months of 2026.

Calculated strategy

Although the 2026 figures cover only eight months and cannot be directly compared with the full-year 2025 total, the number of arrests already recorded points to the continued involvement of older people in drug-related activities.

It also raises questions about the circumstances drawing them into a trade whose consequences include lengthy imprisonment, financial ruin, damaged family relationships and, in some cases, serious health risks.

The NDLEA also reported seizing 6,998.77 kilogrammes of illicit drugs in connection with elderly suspects in 2025, compared with 1,479.988 kilogrammes between January and August 2026.

From couriers to local dealers

The cases recorded by the NDLEA in 2026 provide a glimpse into the different ways older people are becoming involved in the illicit drug trade.

On March 14, 2026, NDLEA operatives arrested 74-year-old Ikwuakalom Nwakoro Emeka at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, while he was preparing to board a British Airways flight to London. The agency alleged that 11 kilogrammes of cocaine were discovered in his luggage, concealed in food items, including ground dry pepper.

He reportedly told investigators he was travelling to Britain on holiday.

Barely three months later, another high-profile case emerged at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos. On June 28, operatives arrested 67-year-old Mary Yetunde Barek, a Nigerian-British woman who worked as a caregiver in the United Kingdom, while she was preparing to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to London.

The NDLEA alleged that 13 kilogrammes of cocaine were recovered from 31 large packages concealed in plantain peels designed to resemble actual plantain hands and packed among other food items.

The agency reported that she admitted ownership of the drugs. However, she subsequently pleaded not guilty when arraigned,
In April, the agency announced the arrest of 93-year-old Friday Ahukanna Chigbu at his residence in Abia State.

A search of his home reportedly yielded 7.7 kilogrammes of skunk, a strain of cannabis. According to the NDLEA, the nonagenarian told investigators he had worked as a truck pusher before learning painting and tiling, but later entered the illicit drug business.

He reportedly said he had been smoking skunk since 1959 before turning it into a business.

Another striking case involved 101-year-old Esther Ogunmabo, arrested in Ilishan, Ogun State, on August 15, with 90 grammes of cannabis packaged in retail sachets. According to the agency, she told investigators that she turned to selling the substance after her provisions shop was destroyed by fire.

She reportedly identified her daughter, who lives in Lagos, as the person arranging supplies every four days.
These cases involve different substances and alleged roles.

While Emeka and Barek were arrested over consignments of cocaine allegedly destined for the United Kingdom, Chigbu and Ogunmabo were accused of involvement in the local cannabis trade.

They nevertheless expose a wider dimension of the problem: The involvement of older people is not confined to international drug smuggling.

Some are being accused of retailing or keeping drugs within their communities, while others appear in investigations involving cross-border consignments.

For security and criminal intelligence specialists, the development may reflect a calculated strategy by trafficking organisations that are increasingly willing to exploit age, social circumstances and public perceptions to move their consignments across borders.

In this arrangement, elderly people may serve as couriers, carrying drugs in luggage or on their persons, while others may be used to store consignments or facilitate local distribution. Their involvement can range from deliberate participation for financial gain to alleged recruitment through deception, inducement or exploitation.

The possibility that some elderly suspects are being recruited through personal connections also raises questions about the extent to which family members, friends and acquaintances may be involved in facilitating drug movements.

Professor Al Chukwuma Okoli, a security governance expert at the Federal University of Lafia, believes trafficking networks are exploiting the assumptions society and security agencies sometimes make about older people.

“The development points to the fact that trafficking networks are pragmatically exploiting demographic stereotypes,” he said.
“Using elderly couriers guarantees them some measure of strategic cover because they (elderly persons) are perceived as low-risk entities who are less likely to attract routine security profiling at airports. This reveals a pattern of using vulnerable persons in order to circumvent law enforcement.”

According to Okoli, older people experiencing financial difficulties arising from healthcare burdens and family pressures are among those traffickers may target.

“The target population includes elderly persons who are undergoing financial difficulties owing to health burden, or family pressure. Traffickers usually identify and contact them through intimate local intermediaries, who advance them promises of significant gratification to secure their cooperation,” he said.

His explanation suggests that recruitment may not always begin with strangers approaching elderly people at airports or offering them drugs directly.

Instead, personal relationships and trusted intermediaries could provide traffickers with access to potential couriers, making it easier to persuade them to undertake risky assignments.

For Alfred Ononugbo, a forensic investigator and criminal intelligence specialist, the circumstances surrounding such cases cannot be separated from the country’s weakening social protection system.

He described social security as a foundation of governance and a necessary structure for protecting different categories of citizens, including the elderly, young people and working adults.

“Social security welfare system is a trigger for governance. It is the bedrock on which democracy is built,” he said.

According to him, a functional welfare system should provide social and economic protection that allows citizens to live with dignity, particularly after their productive years.

“The welfare system did not compensate the elderly for their active years of service. They become vulnerable.

“The government is disconnected from this special class of our society. There is no welfare programme by the government. I mean, look at the difficulty in accessing pensions and gratuity. These are factors that make these people a target. So criminals will offer them opportunities and incentives that probably will draw them out of their peaceful life in order to use them,” he said.

Ononugbo also drew attention to the possible consequences of inadequate access to information and public enlightenment, particularly among older people who may not be familiar with the methods used by contemporary drug trafficking networks.
“They don’t have information. They may not even be aware of narcotics, what it is. It’s not a common trend in their days,” he said.
Ononugbo added that some older people might be struggling with the cost of healthcare, the welfare of their children and the loss of family members, leaving them open to approaches from people offering financial assistance or other incentives.

He warned that the situation could worsen if government fails to address the social and economic conditions that leave older citizens exposed.

“The elderly are vulnerable stage of the social entity called Nigeria. So they are vulnerable,” he said, arguing that the absence of adequate social and economic structures could push people seeking financial, emotional and social security towards the wrong sources of support.

The business of recruiting grandparents

Professor Okoli believes traffickers understand the social position of older people and may deliberately use it to their advantage.
He said potential recruits are often identified through people already within their social circles, who can approach them with promises of substantial financial rewards.

“Traffickers usually identify and contact them through intimate local intermediaries, who advance them promises of significant gratification to secure their cooperation,” he said.

“Investigations often focus couriers. This is so because the courier is physically identifiable and detectable at the endpoint of the vicious chain of the drug dealing compartmentalisation,” he said.

“The other actors, such as financiers and link persons, operate in the shadows of the opaque transactional jurisdictions, obviously making their attribution in the process harder and slower than the immediate arrest of the physically identifiable/detectable courier.”

For Ononugbo, the handling of such investigations also deserves scrutiny. He expressed concern that suspects are sometimes publicly exposed before investigations have been concluded, warning that an arrest should not be confused with proof of guilt.
“They have not been convicted by any competent court of any crime. So, but we have lost that,” he said.

“In the West, they will take you to an isolation room and from there, interrogation will begin. But most often when suspects are apprehended at the airport, on the road, the next thing you see is the information gets online. At whatever stage, even with those items, they are considered as suspects by the law,” he added.

The question of complicity

The arrest of elderly travellers with large quantities of cocaine has also raised questions about the effectiveness of airport security and the possibility of internal collaboration in the movement of illicit drugs.

Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd.), an aviation security expert and former commandant of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, argued that airports have several layers of passenger and baggage screening which, if properly implemented, should make it difficult for drug couriers to pass through undetected.

He identified between six and eight layers of screening, beginning with intelligence gathering and passenger profiling before the issuance of tickets and continuing through check-in, departure terminals, immigration and security checks, boarding gates and baggage screening.

According to him, airlines are expected to use Computer Assisted Passenger Screening Systems (CAPPS) to identify passengers who may pose security risks or threats. Passengers identified as requiring enhanced screening should be subjected to additional checks, while those considered serious threats may be placed on no-fly lists.

He questioned whether airlines and other relevant authorities consistently apply these procedures before allowing passengers to proceed with their journeys.

“There are about six to eight layers for the screening of passengers,” Ojikutu said, explaining that the process should involve intelligence sharing among relevant authorities, airlines, aviation regulators and airport security operators.

He said passengers undergo further checks at the airline check-in counters, where checked-in luggage is screened before boarding passes are issued. “Additional screening follows at the passenger holding terminal, while immigration and state security personnel conduct further checks before the final boarding process. Checked-in baggage also undergoes another screening at the baggage screening hall without the passenger being present.

“If these are done with the sincerity of purpose, most of the free access for air drug traffickers will be closed except where there are accomplices at the aviation-airport security/defence layers,” he said.

Ojikutu stressed that age should not exempt any passenger from security screening, arguing that the same risk assessment principles should apply to elderly travellers, younger passengers and even flight crew.

“Nobody is exempted from security profiling except the President or Head of State of the aircraft originating country,” he said.
He added that screening machines and sniffer dogs are deployed at airports to detect prohibited substances and other security threats, depending on the risk assessment and security programmes of individual airports.