"Popular Yoruba comedian Babatunde Omidina, aka Baba Suwe, is to undergo CT scan to determine if he carried drugs when he was arrested last week, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said yesterday.
NDLEA spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju said Baba Suwewould be released if the scan reveals nothing.
Omidina was arrested at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos last Thursday after allegedly testing positive to drug ingestion.
Ofoyeju said: “We should be able to ascertain things before the week runs out.
“We are contemplating a CT scan as it is more detailed. It can only be done in a hospital.
“Usually, we only use CT scan when a suspect says he is not sure of the exact number of the wraps he ingested.
“CT scan is about N100, 000 per subject. We are exploring other options.”
CT scanning—sometimes called CAT scanning—is a non-invasive medical test that helps physicians diagnose and treat cancer and cardiovascular disease.
It provides greater clarity and reveals more details than regular x-ray examinations.
CT scanning combines special x-ray equipment with sophisticated computers to produce multiple images or pictures of the inside of the body.
According to Ofoyeju, the public is jumping to conclusions while some are criticising the NDLEA because they do not understand how the agency works.
He said: “What is happening is that many members of the public do not really know how we work.
“In every 10 cases that the airport machine suspects, nine will be positive.
“The x-ray shows patches when there are wraps of cocaine; even if somebody eats akpu or eba, it does not show up as drugs.
“From experience, what we are doing is that we are just interdicting drugs.
“Some people will not excrete the drugs they ingested the first or second time; we have even had a case where somebody did three excretions in three days without excreting any drug.
“ It was on the fourth day that drugs started coming out and the guy had been insulting us .
“We told him that we placed him under observation only because the machine suspects him.
“All along, he had the substances in his system and if we had not been persistent, he would have gone.
“In every 15 persons that we place on observation, a minimum of 13 turn out to be positive.
“One thing I want people to understand is that this period is actually an investigative period; we do not go to press to announce that somebody had been arrested.
“However, in Baba Suwe’s case, because he is a celebrity, when people called, we could not deny and we told them he is in our custody but we are still investigating him and conclusions have not been made.” The Nation
No comments:
Post a Comment