Wrong Hustle: Mother of 4 bags 10 years in prison for drug trafficking

A 56-year-old mother of four has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after she was found guilty of drug trafficking by a Lagos court.

A 56-year-old mother of four, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat, will spend the next 10 years behind bars after a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos State, convicted her for drug trafficking.

News Agency of Nigeria [NAN], reports that Modinat was convicted by the presiding Judge, Justice Rilwan Aikawa, after she pleaded guilty to the one count charge preferred against her by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency [NDLEA].

Modinat was arrested on May 19, 2017, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, during the outward clearance of Qatar Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, with 330 grammes of Cocaine found on her.

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While presenting his case and urging the court to convict the accused, the NDLEA prosecutor tendered her harmonized ECOWAS passport with the number: 1808098653, an E-ticket and boarding pass as evidence.

Other evidence tendered by the prosecutor included three written statements of the convict, two requests of scientific aid form, a drug analyzing report, two evidence pouches, two transparent pouches containing the bulk of the drug, two scientific reports of the drug, and a sealed brown envelope.

In her plea for leniency through her lawyer, Morenike Ogunleye, Modinat begged the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing her.

“My Lord, the convict is a first-time offender and she is sober of her action. She is a mother of four children, who single-handedly taking care of them as she has separated from her husband.

In sentencing her, I urged my Lord to consider section 416(2)(b)(d) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015.”

In sentencing her, Justice Aikawa said:

"I have listened to the plea made on her behalf by the counsel, and also listened to the prosecutor that she has no record of crime. I’m balancing, I have to consider both her plea and the what the law says about the crime.

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Consequently, I hereby sentence her to 10 years imprisonment, starting from the day of her arrest.”

If the judge had decided to go by the punishment stipulated under section 11(b) of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Act, Cap. N30, Modinat would have been sentenced to life imprisonment.