Cocaine-Stuffed Roasted Chickens Smuggled Into Nigeria

Lagos, Nigeria – A man was arrested for toting a bundle of roasted chickens through an international airport in Lagos. Sure, traveling with stuffed chickens is a bit odd to begin with, but this wasn’t your mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing. According to NY Daily News, these chickens were stuffed with $150,000 worth of cocaine.

Vincent Chegini Chinweuwa arrived at Lagos’ Murtala Nuhammed International Airport this weekend from Sao Paolo, Brazil with the chickens, each boasting a small, egg-shaped package of cocaine. Oddly enough, the chickens’ secret stuffing was discovered upon Chinweuwa’s arrival in Nigeria; one has to wonder how it was possible for him to board a plane in Brazil with nearly 6 pounds of cocaine.

Chinweuwa, a Nigerian who had struggled to make a living while working in Brazil, thought smuggling these loaded chickens into his home country would help him begin the life he’d always dreamed of. Mitchell Ofoyeju, spokesman for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, told Huff Post that, “This was like a retirement plan for him.” Ofoyeju reported to Fox News that Chinweuwa planned to start a business in Nigeria with the drug money.

Fox News reports that Nigeria is “a major transit point for drugs coming from Latin America and going to Europe and the US.” Last year, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency was ordered to pay $165,000 to a popular Nigerian comedian after falsely accusing him of smuggling cocaine.

According to BBC News, comedian Baba Suwe was about to board a plane bound for Paris when officials detained him; it was “suspected that he [had] ingested the drugs and investigators [waited] to see whether he would excrete them.” No drugs were uncovered. Perhaps Chinweuwa thought that the agency would be more lenient after the controversy.

Cocaine smuggling is all the rage in Nigeria; last year authorities identified more than 100 drug carriers carrying almost 1,000 pounds of cocaine. Drugs have been discovered in all sorts of random places, but chickens? That takes come creativity. Perhaps with Columbia’s “Godmother of Cocaine” recently assassinated, we can now dub Chinweuwa “the Godfather.”