A British-Nigerian grandmother has been arrested after attempting to smuggle cocaine worth more than £1 million onto a London-bound flight, with the drugs concealed inside plantain peels.
Arrest at Lagos Airport
Mary Yetunde Barek, 67, was apprehended at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos on 28 June as she prepared to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow. According to Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), approximately 13kg of cocaine was discovered in her luggage, with a street value exceeding £1 million.
Ms Barek, who works as a carer in the UK, admitted “full ownership of the recovered cocaine” after her arrest, the NDLEA stated.
Concealment Method
The drugs were hidden “in peels of plantain which appeared as real plantains” and packed among other food items, according to the NDLEA. A video posted on social media by the agency showed authorities searching through two large suitcases, finding brightly patterned plastic bags containing what looked like bundles of plantains. When officers sliced into the peels, they discovered packaged powder that triggered a drug detector.
West Africa's Role in Cocaine Trade
West Africa has become a major logistics and redistribution hub for the international cocaine trade, according to the Swiss think tank Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC). Around a third of the cocaine entering Europe passes through the region, and cocaine trafficking was the fastest-growing criminal market in Nigeria and its neighbours between 2019 and 2025, GI-TOC 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 (NCA).
Similar Recent Case
This latest arrest follows shortly after a British mother and her daughter were arrested at a Spanish airport for allegedly trying to fly back to the UK with 42kg of cocaine. The pair, aged 47 and 19, were accused of posing as tourists visiting Valencia before attempting to return to Britain with two suitcases containing 23 packets of class-A cocaine.
