Cocaine Smuggling Nigerian pastor arrested in Tanzania
A Nigerian pastor has been arrested and jailed after being caught smuggling cocaine worth Sh3.1 billion.
A Nigerian pastor has been arrested and jailed after being caught smuggling cocaine worth Sh3.1 billion.
According
to reports, the pastor, Mr Chukwudi Okechukwu, who preaches in Tanzania
under the Lord's Chosen Church of Nigeria was jailed for 30 years.
Police believe he is one of the top members of a drug syndicate
operating in Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa. Okechukwu was jailed
alongside a South African, one Stan Hycent and Pakistani Shoaib Mohammad
Ayazi over the same offence.
According to police
reports, on the day of the arrest, Okechukwu and his accomplices were
hiding in the Dar es Salaam’s Kuduchi Mtongani suburbs. Police received
intelligence that there was a plan by a group to smuggle huge quantity
of cocaine into the country. A surveillance team led by head of
Anti-Drugs Unit, ADU, Godfrey Nzowa, was deployed to keep an eye on the
mansion that the preacher and his accomplices had rented.
Police
report further revealed that when they knocked on the door and made
themselves known, the alleged culprits began running around the house in
panic. The smugglers were eventually arrested. The Nigerian pastor
managed to escape the mansion, but was eventually caught after a chase.
Upon
searching the house, anti-drugs police allegedly seized 81 packets of
drugs which were later confirmed by a Chief Government chemist to be
cocaine hydrochloride.
Nzowa had this to say regarding the arrests;
“The
jailing of the Nigerian pastor and his co-conspirators brought to
three, the number of high profile drug cases that have been heard and
determined by the High Court in the space of three months.
“Early
in September, the same court sentenced to 20 years a young Tanzanian,
Fred William Chonde, to 20 years in jail after it found him guilty of
possessing 180kg worth Sh 5.2 billion and ordered him to pay a Sh 15
billion fine,” Nzowa noted.
“Again last
month, the court sentenced a businessman, Kadiria Saidi Kimaro, who
attempted to smuggle 91 heroin capsules that he had swallowed, through
Julius Nyerere International Airport, JNIA, to 20 years in jail. He was
also ordered to pay Sh122 million in fine.”
Nzowa
also added that drug business was a threat to national security
especially when foreigners are left to operate in the country.
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