A 25-year-old lady, Chioma Okocha, and five others have been sentenced to different terms of imprisonments by Federal High Courts in Edo and Ogun state respectively for trafficking illicit drugs.
Others sentenced by the courts for trafficking drugs were: Ndubuisi John, Haruna Aliyu, Saddam Abdullahi, Bashir Usman, and Usman Ibrahim.
the 25-year-old lady was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Justice AC Obiozor of the Federal High Court in Edo for her involvement in illicit drug business.
Justice Obiozor, while delivering judgment on Okocha’s case after pleading guilty to trafficking 200grams of crack cocaine Yesterday, granted the drug trafficker an option of N2 million fine in replacement for the jail term.
She added that the drug trafficker would lose the fine option if she failed to meet up with the payment within the next few days and the jail term would become effective starting from 24th September when Okocha was arrested while trying to deliver the hard drugs to a customer at an eatery in Benin city.
The other five drug traffickers who were arraigned before a Federal High Court sitting in Abeokuta were handed different jail terms, while Ndubuisi John, Haruna Aliyu and Saddam Abdullahi got 30 years each without an option of fine, Bashir Usman was sentenced to seven years and Usman Ibrahim bagged five years jail term.
Delivering judgments on the case with suit no. FHC/AB/105c/2021 brought before the court, Justice Ogunremi Oguntoyinbo also sentenced the Ndubuisi, Haruna and Saddam to 10 years imprisonment each while Bashir bagged 21 years and Ibrahim was handed 15 years.
The judge stated that the jail terms would run concurrently and that the terms they were sentenced to would serve as warning to others still involved in drug trafficking to back out from the illicit business.
Before the judgement, the convicts had been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on 14th of September 2021 along Lagos -Ibadan expressway conveying 46 bags of Cannabis Sativa weighing 552 kilograms in a truck and subsequently charged on three counts of transportation, possession and dealing in the illicit drug.
