By Victoria Ojonide
Like many Nigerians at the start or end of a long day, I was scrolling through the news without much attention when one headline forced me to stop. A businessman bound for China had been arrested after swallowing 95 wraps of cocaine. I read it again. Ninety-five. Not ten. Not twenty. Ninety-five separate pellets inside a human stomach. According to reports, the 62-year-old Lagos-based businessman was intercepted by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport. A body scan confirmed their intelligence. He was placed under medical watch and later expelled the wraps, nearly 1.6 kilograms, in multiple excretions.
Many people will skim past this story, seeing another arrest, another trafficker, another crime headline competing with politics and economic hardship, but this is not the kind of story one should scroll past. It raises an uncomfortable question: what pushes a person to carry something so lethal inside their own body? The human body was never designed to transport narcotics. Each pellet swallowed is a quiet negotiation with death. If even one ruptures, the result can be fatal within minutes. This is not risk-taking; it is survival placed on a betting table. Investigators say the suspect admitted he turned to drug trafficking to raise money to complete a house in his hometown. That detail lingers. A house is supposed to symbolize security, pride, and legacy. Yet here is the irony—trying to build a home through a path that could have ended his life before he ever slept in it.
At that point, the story stopped being about one man and began to feel like a mirror held up to society. We are living in an age of visible prosperity and invisible processes. Social media shows the finished product—the new house, the sleek car, the effortless lifestyle—but rarely the years of discipline behind honest success. In that vacuum, shortcuts start to look like strategy. Drug trafficking feeds on this urgency. It sells the illusion of one big move that will change everything overnight. But the reality is rarely glamorous. Some end up in prison thousands of miles from home. Others do not survive the journey at all. Ambition is not the enemy. Every growing society depends on ambitious people. But ambition without patience, without values, can quietly drift into dangerous territory. Any opportunity that requires a person to literally carry death inside their stomach is not an opportunity; it is a warning.
There is also a deeper tragedy in the mental prison before the physical one. Imagine boarding an international flight while knowing your life depends on fragile packages inside you not breaking. Every turbulence feels personal. Every delay becomes terrifying. That is not prosperity. That is captivity. Perhaps the strongest lesson from this incident is about choices. Sometimes the distance between aspiration and disaster is just one desperate decision. After reading the story, I found myself thinking that no contract, no building project, no financial target is worth gambling your heartbeat for. In a world where shortcuts often appear attractive, we must remind ourselves that the safest roads are still the honest ones. They may be slower, yes, but they allow you to arrive alive, free, and able to enjoy what you worked for.
The next time a headline like this appears, resist the urge to scroll past. Behind the shock of “95 wraps” is a cautionary tale about pressure, perception, and the dangerous myth of quick wealth. Whenever a path to success demands that you wager your life, it is not a shortcut; it is a cliff.
Victoria Ojonide writes from Ankpa, Kogi state .