The Special Adviser to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lere Olayinka, has been exposed for posting a misleading and recycled news report from 2022 as though it were a recent NDLEA operation.
On his verified X handle, Olayinka claimed that a “27-year-old Madu Chukwuemeka Miracle” had been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for smuggling cocaine concealed in bathing soaps from Kenya to Spain.
In the post, he alleged that the suspect was intercepted at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport in Enugu with 76 bars of cocaine-laced soaps and bottles of liquid cocaine attributing the report to NDLEA spokesperson, Femi Babafemi.
However, a fact-check by Web News, as well as an X user identified as @trigottista, revealed that Olayinka’s claim was completely false.
The picture he posted was not from any recent NDLEA arrest, but rather from a three-year-old report published in October 2022, titled “NDLEA Intercepts Cocaine In Soaps.”
According to the original 2022 report, the person arrested was Abubakar Ibrahim, the village head of Gidan Abba in Bodinga Local Government Area of Sokoto State not any “Madu Chukwuemeka Miracle” as Olayinka claimed.
The archived story detailed a massive NDLEA operation in which 11 suspects were arrested and nearly a million pills of opioids, over a ton of cannabis and khat, and 46.637 kilograms of cocaine were recovered.
The image of a man holding soaps that contain cocaine which Olayinka presented as a new arrest was part of that 2022 Sokoto report.
Olayinka’s deliberate alteration of names and dates has drawn sharp criticism across social media, with users accusing him of spreading misinformation to manipulate public perception and incite ethnic narratives.
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