I knew I had drugs, Nigerian admits

CHARLES MUSONDA writes A NIGERIAN woman charged with trafficking in 1.06 kilogrammes of heroin has admitted knowing that she was carrying the drugs when she left the hotel for Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. Loveth Obanor, 23, who works as a maid in Italy, said the same drugs she collected from a woman in Lusaka, after they were sent by a certain man from South Africa, were the ones she was caught with at the airport on 3 March, 2020. Opening her defence before Lusaka Chief Resident Magistrate LameckMwale, Obanor said she came to Zambia for a visit and checked in at a hotel whose name she could not remember. She said after staying for two weeks and a day at the hotel, she missed an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Lusaka to Italy via Addis Ababa. Obanor said she then called her male friend only identified as Happy who is based in Italy to change her air ticket for another date. She said after Happy changed the ticket to 3 March, 2020 he sent it to her on WhatsApp and told her that someone would give her something to carry for him from Zambia to Italy. “I didn’t meet the man from South Africa because he gave the parcel to a woman I met in Lusaka. I then called Happy in Italy and he told me to count the drugs. They were 84 (pellets) and I asked him how I was going to carry them. “He told me to swallow them but I told him that I had difficulties with my stomach. I told Happy to tell the woman to come and get the drugs but he said I had to carry them anyway. That is how I put them in a wig and wrapped it in a blue plastic bag which I put in my bag. He said no one should touch my bag,” Obanor said. She said when she reached the airport to check in, she put her bag on the scanner but later security officers searched her bag after detecting the drugs. At this point, Mr. Mwale asked her why she had been wasting the court’s time by denying the charge. He told her that there is Covid-19 outbreak and the courts need to spend time on more serious issues, after which he set 11 June, 2020 as judgment day. The Sun