Customs officers at the Ouessa customs office on Burkina Faso’s border with Ghana seized 2,846 kilograms of chanvre indien, the French term used for cannabis, on 23 March 2021.[1] The officers stopped a vehicle carrying a foreign registration plate whose driver was questioned at the check.[1] The cannabis was packed in sacks and pressed slabs and hidden in a specially built cavity at the back of a forty-foot container that appeared empty.[1] The driver pretended to be carrying nothing and invited the officers to keep searching, but they went on and found the hiding place.[1] Ouaganews, drawing on the customs communication service, reported that the cavity was reachable only through the container roof and was almost impossible to detect.[2]

Customs valued the seized merchandise at 284,615,000 CFA francs.[1] Anadolu Ajansı put the value of the whole seizure at 284,615,000 CFA francs, about 500,000 US dollars, citing the customs communications directorate.[3] The same consignment also carried amphetamines made up of tramadol and diazepam weighing an estimated 1 kg, which are not cannabis and are left out of the cannabis figures.[3] Burkina24 described the load as chanvre indien together with amphetamines such as tramadol and diazepam weighing an estimated 1 kg.[1] The south-west regional customs directorate called it its second and largest drug seizure since the start of 2021, after a haul at the Nako customs post on 11 March.[2]

Anadolu Ajansı likewise reported the customs directorate describing it as the largest drug seizure since the start of the year, in Ouessa in the south-west of the country on the Ghana border.[3] No source reports a charge, court appearance or outcome for the driver questioned at the check.[1]