By Ruona Agbroko
May 24, 2009 04:45AMT
John Ifeanyi Uko [pictured] was arrested on April 09, 2009 for ingesting 136 wraps of cocaine weighing a total of 3.349 kilogrammes. He holds the unenviable record of being the first individual to swallow the highest quantity of cocaine, since the NDLEA was set up in June 1989.
Mr. Uko refuses to speak at first, as he fixed his close-set eyes instead at nothing in particular on the floor. When he is told he is handsome, he smiles, then chuckles briefly, and asked of what use, good looks are to him now. When he finally speaks, his voice, with a baritone rasp, is barely audible.
Mr. Uko refuses to speak at first, as he fixed his close-set eyes instead at nothing in particular on the floor. When he is told he is handsome, he smiles, then chuckles briefly, and asked of what use, good looks are to him now. When he finally speaks, his voice, with a baritone rasp, is barely audible.
“The publicity is too much,” the 46-year-old father of three managed to say amidst sighs. “Make una no kill me.” When asked if he understands that he is a spectacle, not only for the quantity of drugs he ingested, but also because he is still alive despite taking such a huge health risk, the suspected drug mule shrugs.
“I don’t know if I am lucky to still be alive or not,” he says. “I’m just like a goat in a slaughter house. Anytime they open the door, you do what they ask you to do.” Seated in the offices of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at Ikoyi, Mr. Uko says he has been in the confinement of the agency since May 15. Laughing, he appreciates the availability of water, and confirms that his relatives and a lawyer have access to him but gripes about the biting mosquitoes, and the inadequate meals: watery beans in the morning and minute portions of eba with egusi (melon seed) soup in the afternoon.
His story reads like any average drug courier’s. Impoverished family circumstances and a failing auto spare parts business prompted him to seek assistance from “a brother” who offered him about ₦920,000 in exchange for transporting cocaine. Mr. Uko says that until officials of the drug agency arrested him at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos, he had no idea that he was carrying in his stomach, cocaine worth about ₦57 million (street value).
“I didn’t actually know the consequences of what I was doing,” he says. “I was desperate... looking at the money. They told me the more I swallowed, the more money they would give me... I am a large eater, my stomach is big. I was waiting to board (a) KLM (flight) going to Germany when I was caught. I didn’t even know they could scan people at (the) airport.”
His story reads like any average drug courier’s. Impoverished family circumstances and a failing auto spare parts business prompted him to seek assistance from “a brother” who offered him about ₦920,000 in exchange for transporting cocaine. Mr. Uko says that until officials of the drug agency arrested him at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos, he had no idea that he was carrying in his stomach, cocaine worth about ₦57 million (street value).
“I didn’t actually know the consequences of what I was doing,” he says. “I was desperate... looking at the money. They told me the more I swallowed, the more money they would give me... I am a large eater, my stomach is big. I was waiting to board (a) KLM (flight) going to Germany when I was caught. I didn’t even know they could scan people at (the) airport.”
With rapidly watering eyes, Mr. Uko, who hails from Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State, says his only regrets are for his aged mother, wife and three children in the university. “Every day, I wonder what will happen to them,” he says. “This trauma, this shame is too much for me, talk less of them.”
No comments:
Post a Comment