Federal Court Grants NDLEA Right To Hold Baba Suwe

Oct 23, 2011 – Federal Court Grants NDLEA Right To Hold Baba Suwe

The Latest News On Baba Suwe’s NDLEA , Drug Trafficking Case

A Lagos State Federal High Court on Friday, approved a request by the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to keep comedian, Babatunde Omodina, who is popularly known as Baba Suwe, in custody for 15 more days.

Justice Okechukwu Okeke made the order after entertaining arguments on an ex-parte application from the NDLEA lawyer, Theresa Asuquo.

The application was supported by a 29-paragraph affidavit deposed to by an NDLEA intelligence officer, Femi Osifuye and a CT scan result issued by a consultant radiologist with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Dr. Subhash Vijayvargiya.

The result, according to the affidavit, confirmed that Baba Suwe has large amounts of narcotics in his body.

It would be recalled that the NDLEA arrested the comedian on October 12, while he was trying to board an Air France flight to Paris, because the scanning machine at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport indicated that he had ingested substances suspected to be hard drugs.

According to the affidavit, Osifuye averred that following Baba Suwe’s arrest, he was placed on observation pending when he would excrete the ingested substances, but  while on observation, Baba Suwe refused to eat, claiming that he eats only once in three days.

He added that as a result of Baba Suwe’s refusal to eat, he had not excreted the ingested substances.

According to Osifuye, after the comedian made the second excretion and no substance was found, the NDLEA had to take him to LASUTH for another CT scan for a second opinion on whether he indeed ingested the narcotic drugs, and the test confirmed large amount of drugs in his body.

Besides, the agency stressed, it would be in the interest of the suspect to excrete the ingested substances so as to prevent them from bursting in his abdomen, a situation the agency argued might lead to his death.