Accra, June 29, GNA - An Accra Regional Tribunal has jailed a 29-year-old Nigerian student from Benin City for 12 years for attempting to export 1,245.7 grams of cocaine out of the country.

David Osaro Igbiniegie pleaded not guilty to the charge of possessing narcotic drugs without lawful authority, but at the end of his trial, which started on January 17 2006, the Tribunal found him guilty and convicted him accordingly.

The Tribunal ordered the deportation of the convict after serving his sentence.

The facts of the case were that on April 21 2005, Igbiniegie arrived at the Kotoka International Airport to board a KLM Flight to Amsterdam and while the convict was going through departure formalities, he was picked by officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) on suspicion of carrying narcotic drugs.

The officials handed the convict over to security personnel for interrogation, after which he was escorted to the 37th Military Hospital for an X-ray examination.

The examination revealed that Igbiniegie had some foreign substances in his stomach.

Under supervision of the NCB officials, he expelled 90 pellets of whitish powdery substance suspected to be cocaine. Upon further interrogation, Igbiniegie mentioned one Uche in Amsterdam as the one who asked him to collect the drugs for him from a James in Accra for a fee of 3,000 dollars. An analytical report on the substances from the Ghana Standards Board proved positive for cocaine. 29 June 06