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Lukman Olabiyi
A young man, Ejikeme Samuel who pleaded guilty for attempting to export 2.1 kilogrammes of a banned hard drug, methamphetamine, has been convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment.
Samuel was convicted by Justice Nicholas Oweibo of the Federal High Court, Lagos.
The convict was docked on a count charge of the offence pressed against him by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
The convict, according to the NDLEA lawyer, Mr. Ibrahim Abu, was arrested with the banned substance on February 25, 2018, during outward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight to Mombasa, Kenya, at the departure hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja-Lagos.
Abu while reviewing the facts of the matter after the convict had pleaded guilty to the charge, tendered several exhibits which included his statements, $200 and the seized drugs among others.
The convict’s lawyer, Bright Aikhegbe, did not oppose the tendering and admissibility of the exhibits.
Following the guilty plea by the convict, the prosecutor, Mr. Abu, urged the court to pronounce him guilty as charged and sentence him accordingly.
But his lawyer, Mr. Aikhegbe, in his allocutor, pleaded with the court to tamper justice with mercy in sentencing his client, as he was a first- time offender and that did not waste the precious time of the court.
The convict’s lawyer told the court that his client had been remorseful and pleaded not to commit the act if given a second chance.
Upon listening to the plea for mercy of the convict’s lawyer, Justice Oweibo sentenced the convict to two years imprisonment.
The judge, however, ordered that the convict’s jail term should commence from the date of his arrest.
