Johannesburg - A 38-year-old Nigerian man was hanged in Singapore on Friday for drug trafficking after being caught with 2.6 kilograms of cannabis.
“A 38-year-old male Nigerian national, Chijioke Stephen Obioha, had his death sentence carried out on November 18 at Changi Prison Complex,” the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said in a statement.
Obioha, who graduated in industrial chemistry from Nigeria’s Benin University, had originally moved to Singapore in 2005 hoping to be a footballer, the BBC reported.
He was arrested in 2007 by drugs officers who found 14 blocks of cannabis in a bag he was carrying and another 14 blocks in the flat he was renting, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported.
Under Singapore law, anyone caught with more than 500 grams of cannabis can be sentenced to death.
Obioha had originally, and unsuccessfully, appealed against his execution in 2010.
Obioha then turned down the possibility of applying for re-sentencing after a change in the law that came into force in 2013, the BBC reported.
On Thursday, his lawyers launched a final bid to have his sentence commuted to life in prison but that was refused by a three-judge court.
Singapore executed four people in 2015, one for murder and three for drug offences, according to prison statistics.
African News Agency