Ting Hung Kiong works as a caregiver in Malaysia, is 63 years old and, according to her own account, had never had problems with the law. On May 17, 2026, when she landed at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport aboard an Emirates flight, NDLEA agents searched her luggage and found 31 kilograms of “Canadian Loud” — a synthetic variant of cannabis — carefully distributed between two large travel suitcases.
Her version is specific: her daughter paid for the entire trip from Malaysia to Thailand and then to Nigeria. She spent two weeks in Bangkok before someone handed her the cargo at the Thai airport itself to take to its destination. She says she did not know what was inside. Nigerian authorities did not believe her and detained her in the Arrivals Hall of Terminal 2.
What no one has yet been able to answer is whether Ting Hung Kiong was used as a mule without knowing it — a documented tactic in international trafficking networks — or whether she knowingly took part in an operation that crossed four countries. The NDLEA has not revealed whether the investigation also points to the daughter or what the next judicial step will be.