A 43-year-old trader, Abubakar Sulaiman, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for drug trafficking by Justice Ambrose Lewis Alagoa at the Federal High Court in Lagos.
The sentence, delivered on Tuesday, follows Sulaiman's guilty plea to a seven-count charge of dealing in illegal drugs.
The court, however, provided an option for Sulaiman to pay a fine of five million naira in lieu of serving the custodial sentence. The charges, brought forth by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), included the illegal dealing in banned substances such as cannabis sativa, diazepam, tramadol, codeine cough syrup, rohypnol, methamphetamine, and molly, among others.
During the court proceedings, Prosecutor Mr. B.S. Abdullahi presented the charges against Sulaiman, which he admitted to by pleading guilty. The prosecutor supported the case with an array of evidence, including Sulaiman's extra-judicial statement and the bulk of exhibits recovered from him.
Following the conviction, Defense Counsel Mr. Augustine Nwagwu requested leniency, highlighting that Sulaiman was a first-time offender and had not wasted the court's time with his immediate guilty plea.
Sulaiman's offenses were committed on May 2 in Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos State, and were in violation of Section 11(c) of the NDLEA Act Cap N30 Law of the Federation 2004, which prohibits dealing in restricted narcotics without lawful authority.
