Leadership (Abuja)
Adesoji Oyinlola
19 March 2008
Lagos — A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has yesterday sentenced a Lagos drug baron, Akindele Kumoluyi, a.k.a. Ile-Eru, to 10 years imprisonment.
The trial judge, Justice Tijjani Abubakar, pronounced the sentence after Kumoluyi had pleaded guilty to a two-count charge of importing 10 kilogrammes of cocaine into the country.
In the second charge, he was accused of aiding one Abdul Fatai Olori to import a consignment of illegal substance from Brazil .
The charge was filed by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) director of prosecution and legal practices, Femi Oloruntoba, who urged the court to convict the drug trafficker as charged.
In his plea for leniency, counsel to Kumoluyi, Wahab Shittu, said the court should be lenient because the convict lost his father during his incarceration.
The counsel said Ile-Eru had an aged mother who is over 80 years and that she had been traumatised by this case, adding that the convict had had no contact with his wives and 10 children and that the children's education had been affected.
Shittu further appealed to the court to be lenient, citing Matthew 6:9, Mark 10 and likened the case to that of a prodigal son.
In his own reaction, Mr. Oloruntoba told the court that the convict had previous record of conviction.
In his ruling, Justice Abubakar advised Shittu to become either a pastor or an imam.
Consequently, he sentenced the convict to 20 years imprisonment, five years for each count charge, to run concurrently from the day of his arrest.
Kumoluyi had already spent three years in prison.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Leadership. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
