Scan confirms Baba Suwe ingested large drugs —NDLEA

 LIKE in the theatre world, the ding-dong between popular comedian Babatunde Omidina and the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is gradually turning into sitcom, and a series. Omidina, popularly known by his screen name Baba Suwe, has continued to maintain innocence on allegations that he ingested hard drugs.

Yesterday, however, the agency told a Federal High Court that its suspicion had been backed by a scientific scan.
The NDLEA added that Omidina had failed to excrete the suspected drugs by refusing to eat. The agency claimed that Omidina told its agents that he eats only once in three days.

 Consequently, Justice Okechukwu Okeke of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted an application filed by the NDLEA for permission to keep Omidina in custody for another 15 days.

Justice Okeke granted the order after listening to arguments in an ex-parte application from the NDLEA’s counsel, Theresa Asuquo.

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


According to the NDLEA, the result of the scan confirmed that Baba Suwe has a large amount of narcotic drugs in his body.
The agency arrested the popular comedian on October 12 while trying to board an Airfrance plane to Paris on suspicion that 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, the man was placed on observation pending when he would defecate the ingested substances, but that 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.

The NDLEA official added that with the confirmation that Baba Suwe still had hard drugs in his stomach, he was bound to excrete it with time, adding that his case was not an isolated one as it takes some suspects a longer time to excrete than others, hence the need to further keep him in custody.

Osifuye, who noted that it would take the comedian about five to seven days to complete excreting the whole drug in his stomach, added that the suspect must be in custody for the agency to retrieve the ingested drugs.

Besides, the agency stressed that 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.

A fellow actor and former President of the Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (ANTP), Prince Jide Kosoko, yesterday told the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that Omidina has continued to maintain innocence of the allegations.
Kosoko said that Omidina declared that even if the NDLEA continued to keep him under watch for four months, it would not get any hard drug in his excreta.

There were unconfirmed reports on Thursday that Omidina had slammed a N1 billion libel suit against the organization.
Kosoko confirmed to the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that he was allowed to see Omidina for the first time on Thursday, alongside three of his colleagues.

“I was allowed to see Baba Suwe yesterday (on Thursday) and we asked him to confess to us if it was true that he was trafficking in hard drugs. He told us that he had never been involved in cocaine business and that he had no reason to do so now,” Kosoko said.

The former ANTP boss added that after the meeting with the detained actor, officials of the NDLEA told him that they were still convinced that Omidina had drugs in his stomach even after several tests had cleared him.

“To my surprise, the NDLEA was still adamant and not ready to free him, even after nine days. I understand that in a large environment, there are bound to be bad eggs. But I think the agency should have been more efficient in dealing with this issue.

I wonder why they are celebrating the arrest and blowing it out of proportion. I told them that they should not push us to the wall where we would be forced to organise a rally. We wouldn’t want to compound the level of insecurity in this country.  We don’t want to organise a kind of rally or protest that will be hijacked by hoodlums to unleash terror,” he added.