Smugglers package banned drugs as noodles

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) in the Volta Region, Ghana at the weekend said its officials confiscated boxes of drugs, including Tramadol, the popularly abused, prescribed-only pain relief, being smuggled into Nigeria from Togo.

Concealed in empty boxes of a popular noodles brand, the drugs were being smuggled through an unapproved route at a point referred to as ‘Kpoglo border’ near Ho, in Ghana.

Speaking on a Ghanaian show, the Volta Regional Director of the FDA, Gordon Akurugu, said the driver of the bus in which the drugs were being transported was intercepted last Saturday. He has since been arrested.

He was carrying noodles boxes which contained 10 different brands of drugs, including Tramadol, Akurugu said.
The drugs, he said, were worth about GHC100, 000 ($22,267.50).

Akurugu observed that the drugs were mostly smuggled through unapproved routes into the country.

The FDA, he said, has put in place good systems to monitor and pick intelligent information, but he urged the public to help by providing information on unapproved routes being used by smugglers.

Akurugu said his organisation was also on the lookout for a cough syrup containing codeine which has been banned from Nigeria in order to prevent its entry into the country.