By Fawaz Adebisi
A Federal High Court in Sokoto, headed by Justice Ahmad Mahmud, has jailed an acting district head, Alhaji Umar Mohammed (aka Dan Bala), for five and a half years for possessing and trafficking 436.38kgs of cannabis and 7kgs of psychotropic drugs.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) had arrested him in October 2022 and charged him with four counts of drug offences.
The court found him guilty of all the charges and sentenced him to two years imprisonment on each of counts 1 and 2, with an option of paying N1million fine, and eight months imprisonment on each of counts 3 and 4, without an option of fine.
This was confirmed by the NDLEA spokesman, Femi Babafemi, on Sunday. He also gave an update on the activities of the NDLEA operatives in the past week.
He said that officers on patrol along Okene -Lokoja-Abuja expressway on Tuesday 10th October intercepted a commercial bus from Lagos to Kano and seized 49kgs of cannabis from it.
He also said that operatives in Edo state on Wednesday 11th October raided the Orue forest, Owan West LGA, where they arrested Happy Akashili, 37, and Solomon Uwesue, 40, in a hut inside a cannabis farm measuring 2.367308 hectares.
The farm was destroyed and 92kgs of processed skunk were recovered from the hut.
He added that the NDLEA officers will continue to work hard to stop the flow of illicit drugs in and out of Nigeria.
