Posted by Chinenye on Wed 08th Jul, 2026 - tori.ng
A routine airport journey turned into a major drug investigation after authorities uncovered a shocking discovery hidden inside luggage.
(British-Nigerian woman. Photo by Standard News)
A British-Nigerian grandmother has been arrested after attempting to smuggle £1 million worth of coc@ine onto a London-bound flight, concealed inside plantain peels.
Mary Yetunde Barek, 67, was arrested at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos as she tried to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow on June 28.
She had around 13kg of coc@ine in her luggage, with a street value of more than £1 million, according to Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.
Barek reportedly admitted "full ownership of the recovered coc@ine" after she was apprehended, the NDLEA said.
Barek, who works as a carer in the UK, concealed the drugs in peels of plantain that appeared to be genuine, packed among other food items, according to the agency.
A video posted on social media by the Drug Enforcement Agency showed authorities searching through two large suitcases to find brightly patterned plastic bags containing what looked like bundles of plantains.
However, once officers sliced into the peels, they discovered packaged powder that set off a drug detector.
West Africa has become a major logistics and redistribution hub for the international coc@ine tr@de, according to the Swiss think tank Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
Around a third of the coc@ine reaching Europe passes through the region, and coc@ine tr@fficking was the fastest-growing criminal market in Nigeria and its neighbours between 2019 and 2025, the organisation said.
Many gangs that dominate the British drug trade, such as those from the western Balkans, operate across West Africa, according to the National Crime Agency.
This latest arrest comes shortly after a British mother and her daughter were arrested at a Spanish airport, allegedly attempting to fly back to the UK with 42kg of coc@ine.
The pair, aged 47 and 19, were alleged to have posed as tourists visiting Valencia before trying to return to Britain with two suitcases containing 23 packets of the class-A drug.