Nigerian student sentenced to death for 26.5kg of cannabis
Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Amelia Tee sentenced 37-year-old Nigerian student Uchechukwu Nelson Ohaechesi to death by hanging on 21 July 2014 for trafficking 26.5 kilos of cannabis at Taman Connaught highway in Cheras in October 2010. The judge ruled his defence amounted to fabrication.
High Court judge Datin Amelia Tee Hong Geok Abdullah sentenced 37-year-old Nigerian college student Uchechukwu Nelson Ohaechesi to be hanged on 21 July 2014 after finding him guilty of trafficking26.5 kilos of cannabis four years earlier.[1][2]Ohaechesi committed the offence beside an overhead bridge staircase on the Kajang-bound Taman Connaught highway in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, at about 7.45pm on 17 October 2010.[1]
The judge ruled that Ohaechesi had failed to raise reasonable doubt against the prosecution’s case and that his defence amounted to an afterthought, pure fabrication and untrue.[1]Under section 39B of Malaysia’s Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, trafficking in 200 grams or more of cannabis carries a mandatory death sentence.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Both opened sources trace to the same July 2014 New Straits Times report, whose original page is no longer available; no fully independent second account was found.
A Nigerian press account gives 26.533 kilos against the 26.5 kilos used here; the report follows the New Straits Times figure.
No appeal outcome was reported in the opened sources.
A 2018 retrospective misdates the sentence to that year; the report follows the contemporary 2014 account.
On 19 October 2026 the Sibu High Court sentenced Tiong Soon Hieng, 41, to life imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane for trafficking 5,081.06 g of cannabis. Judge Wong Siong Tung declined the death penalty and dated the term from his arrest on 6 January 2023 outside a coffee shop in Bintangor.
Cannabis 5.081 kgPrison life imprisonment and 12 strokes
Kuala Lumpur High Court on 29 September 2026 sentenced Dasham Novada Wickramathunga, 33, to 10 years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane after he pleaded guilty to an alternative charge over about 2.57 kg of cannabis found at a Jalan Ipoh residence in April 2024.
S. Mohan, 38, and Ahmad Shamil Abdul Rashid, 28, were sentenced to 30 years in prison and 12 strokes of the cane for trafficking 139 kg of cannabis from a Bangsar car park in 2022. The judge found the case proven beyond reasonable doubt; the prosecution had sought the heavy term over the quantity.
Malaysia's Federal Court reinstated the trafficking convictions and 30-year sentences of Azril Azhar Ahmad and Zulfattar Md Ridzuan for 264.36 g of cannabis, after the Court of Appeal had reduced the charge to possession. Both had been released in February 2026.