4 Nigerians, 6 others to be killed in Indonesia on Wednesday

This coming Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of April, four Nigerian men (Jamiu Owolabi Abashin, 50, Martin Anderson, 50, Okwudili Oyatanze, 41, Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, 47) and six others have been sentenced to death by firing squad in Indonesia. 

They were found guilty of drug trafficking and will be executed just after the stroke of midnight.

Photos of the accused have been released.

Jamiu was living on the streets of Bangkok in 1998 when a fellow African living there took pity on him and brought him home. Shortly after, according to him, his new friend asked whether he wanted a quick-paying job, in which he would get $400 for bringing a package of clothing to the friend’s wife in Surabaya, Indonesia, where she sold used shirts and pants.

Abashin readily agreed. The package contained nearly 12 pounds of heroin, and he was arrested after landing at Surabaya’s airport. Abashin, who was also traveling on a false Spanish passport, argued he was duped.

Martin was arrested in Jakarta in 2003 on a charge of possessing about 1.8 ounces of heroin and was accused of being part of a local drug ring. He had traveled to Indonesia on a fake Ghanaian passport and has been incorrectly identified as Ghanaian. He was sentenced to death in 2004.

According to his lawyer, Anderson was shot in the leg during his arrest.

He has been in poor spirits since being transferred to Nusakambangan Island for execution, Kusmanto said.

Anderson has filed for a judicial review of his conviction and death sentence with the Supreme Court, but his lawyer said he feared the court would not consider the appeal until after he is executed.

His lawyer fears such appeals can take six months to be heard. “Obviously we hope it’s sooner.” He said.

Known in Indonesia’s penal system as “The Death Row Gospel Singer,” Oyatanze was arrested in 2001 while trying to smuggle 5.5 pounds of heroin through Jakarta’s international airport, in his stomach, after arriving on a flight from Pakistan. He was convicted the following year and sentenced to death.

Oyatanze has made the most of his incarceration, writing more than 70 songs and recording multiple albums behind bars. He has performed with prison guards as well as fellow inmates.

In one of his music videos shot in 2008, Oyatanze sang his song “God You Know,” which was also the name of an album he released that year.

“He has turned his life around in jail,” said the Rev. Charles Burrows, a Catholic priest from Ireland who now lives in Indonesia and is offering religious counseling to Oyatanze as he awaits his execution.

Raised in Biafra, Southeastern Nigeria, Oyatanze started a garment business in 1999, traveling to Indonesia to buy clothing and resell it in Nigeria. The business collapsed and Oyatanze in debt, traveled to Pakistan to try get back on his feet, as adviced by a fellow Nigerian living there.

The plan involved swallowing capsules of heroin before boarding a flight to Jakarta. “There was a chance to earn some easy money, so he became a courier,” Burrows said.

Unemployed in Lagos, he was enticed to Pakistan by fellow Nigerians on the promise of a job with good wages.

But once in Pakistan, instead of a job, he got an offer to swallow some capsules, filled with goat horn powder and fly to Indonesia, his wife, Fatimah Farwin narrates.

“They said they didn’t want to pay tax on it,” Fatimah said. “When he arrived at the airport in Jakarta, the police saw him, I don’t know how but they caught him and X-rayed him, and they found it and it was drugs.”

Arrested in 2001, Nwolise was convicted the following year of bringing 2.6 pounds of heroin into the country, and was sentenced to death.

During his trial, according to Fatimah, Nwolise had no translator, and his Indonesian lawyer could barely communicate with him. She said that a judge, through an intermediary, offered to sentence him to prison rather than death if he paid a bribe of 200 million rupiah, worth about $22,000 at the time.

“But he was just a poor courier. He didn’t have any money,” Fatimah said.

Fatimah, who is Indonesian, met Nwolise in prison in 2007, when she was accompanying a friend who was visiting another inmate. The two married that year; they have since had two children, now 5 and 3, but she has not brought them to see him since they were infants. She has told them that their father is working in an office in another country.

In January, the Indonesian police accused Nwolise of running a drug syndicate from prison. No charges were brought, but Fatimah, who says convinced that her husband is innocent of the accusation, believes it resulted in his being placed in the group of inmates now facing imminent execution.

“Some woman on the outside blamed him,” Fatimah said, referring to a police informant, “but when they came to his cell, they never found anything – never, never, never. He never had a trial and next thing, they wanted to execute him.”

Eeeyaa, really sad. But is this drug thing really worth the consequences? Far from it in my opinion.