Nine years and seven months after his arrest, Nigerian Chijioke Obioha has been executed in Singapore for drug trafficking.
The 38-year-old was hanged at Changi Prison early Friday morning alongside a Malaysian national who was convicted on separate drugs offences.
Facebook user, Ravi Mravi, who has been monitoring the development, said Obioha’s body will be released to the Roman Catholic Prison Ministry (RCPM) in Singapore on Saturday morning and a requiem mass held in the afternoon.
The RCPM, he said, has decided to keep the burial confidential.
Obioha’s execution came a day after Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, described the conviction as heartbreaking.
In a statement by her Special Assistant on Media, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, Dabiri-Erewa said since Singapore was determined to enforce its laws as a deterrent to drug trafficking, there was nothing that could be done except to continue to appeal.
“While we regret the death sentence passed on the Nigerian, we once again appeal to Nigerians to avoid crimes like drug trafficking with most countries especially in Asia declaring zero tolerance for drug trafficking,” Dabiri-Erewa stated.
Amnesty International had campaigned vigorously for Obioha, calling for a last minute stoppage of the execution.
“The death penalty is never the solution. It will not rid Singapore of drugs. By executing people for drug-related offences, which do not meet the threshold of most serious crimes, Singapore is violating international law. Most of the world has turned its back on this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It is about time that Singapore does the same, starting by restoring a moratorium on all executions as a first step towards abolition of this punishment,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Obioha, who said he travelled to Singapore in 2005 to try out for a football club, was arrested in April 2007 by anti-narcotics officers who found 14 blocks of vegetable matter in the bag he had with him.
The officers escorted him to his rental flat and found another 14 blocks in various bags.
He was convicted of trafficking 2,604.56g of cannabis and sentenced to death on December 30, 2008.
Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) provides for the death penalty if the amount of cannabis trafficked is 500g or more.
After his appeal against conviction and sentence was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2010, Obioha elected to be considered for re-sentencing in May 2015, under the new death penalty regime that came into effect at the start of 2013.
He subsequently withdrew his re-sentencing application in April this year.
His counsel filed a criminal motion in court for a stay of execution and to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment on Wednesday, which was heard and dismissed the following day.
His petition to the President for clemency was also turned down.
Under Singaporean law, when there is a presumption of drug possession and trafficking, the burden of proof shifts from the prosecutor to the defendant.
This, according to Amnesty International, violates the right to a fair trial by turning the presumption of innocence on its head.
