| June 27, 2008 The
Indonesian authority yesterday were to execute two Nigerians, who
have been convicted of smuggling illegal drugs into the country.
According to a report from the Associated
Press, in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, which quoted the
country's officials, the execution was meant to mark the United
Nations' anti-drugs day.
The report gave the names of the condemned
Nigerians as Samuel Okoye, 37, and Hansen Nwaolisa, 40, and said
they were arrested at Jakarta's international airport in 2001, each
carrying more than 6.5 pounds (three kilogrammes) of heroin.
It also said that the duo have been held at a
high-security prison on Nusakambangan island since their conviction.
"They will be executed tonight," Attorney
General Hendarman Supandji told reporters yesterday.
He refused further comment, but the country's
anti-narcotics agency said their deaths before a firing squad would
mark the international anti-drugs day.
Television footage showed the wives and
children of the convicts being escorted to the island, along with
ambulances carrying two coffins.
Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to
death in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative
nation of 235 million people, and foreigners have not been exempt.
About 140 people are currently on death row,
mostly for drug-related crimes.
Not too long ago, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, had to plead with the Indonesian
ambassador to Nigeria to commute to life imprisonment the death
sentences passed on the Nigerians, but all the plea appears to have
fallen on deaf ears.
Similarly, at a media briefing in his office,
the minister told foreign affairs correspondents that there were
more than 50 Nigerians on the death row over drug-related offences
in Indonesia.
Worried by this development, the Ministry of
Foreign is already preparing to host an international conference
aimed at educating and sensitising Nigerians on the danger
associated with illegal migration, as well as behaviours that are
capable of giving Nigeria negative image abroad.
At the time of this report, Leadership could
not get any official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or that of
the Indonesian Embassy in Abuja to comment on the matter.
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