In what many will consider an international show of shame and a smear on the country’s name, we are witnessing a Nigerian condemned to death abroad.
Ekwegbalu James Nzube, a 45-year-old Nigerian man, has been sentenced to death in Vietnam, precisely by a court in the southern Tay Ninh Province. He was apprehended after he was caught trafficking almost four kilograms of methamphetamine (popularly known as meth) from Cambodia.
He was convicted on Tuesday, March 2, and he narrated how he met another Nigerian named Jone in China in 2014. Jone hired him to transport drugs from Cambodia to Vietnam.
Nzube came to Ho Chi Minh City before going to Cambodia to fetch the drugs for which he was paid $2,000. But while illegally crossing the border into Vietnam last July he was caught by border guards in Tay Ninh Province who found four plastic bags with almost 4 kg of meth in his rucksack.
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Under the Vietnamese penal code, anyone caught with even a small amount of heroin can be sentenced to death. There are over two dozen foreigners currently serving life sentences or facing the death penalty for drug trafficking offences.
Nzube now joins a growing number of Nigerian condemned to death abroad, usually for peddling drugs.