Icheoku says this is not a case where a holier than thou higher moral grounds will suffice as the irate Prime Minister should have preached to his country men not to peddle their nefarious illegal drug trade in Indonesia, fully aware of the existing prescribed death penalty against such offense. Icheoku says what went down in Indonesia today is not comparable to the Nigeria case under then Muhammadu Buhari in 1984 when he murdered three innocent Nigerians using a retroactive decree. Then, there was no death penalty for drug peddling on the books in Nigeria so the three Nigerians killed were not possessed with the necessarily mens rea that their action would lead to their death. They could have stayed away as one of them confessed that if only he knew it would result to his death, he would not have engaged in the illicit trade.
Icheoku agrees that if anyone knowingly breaks the law, he should face prescribed penalties including death if already preexisting the offense and vividly on the books. Icheoku also supports law enforcement of any country, especially one geared towards protecting its society from such a purely economic and financial gains crimes as drug dealing; which destroys the fabric of societies rendering many citizens hopelessly dependent addicts which in turn drastically impacts the society overall. Provided due process was strictly followed and such laws applied across the board and not selectively applied, depending on who infractured the law, it is okay and should serve as a deterrent. So what if two Australians were among those nine executed drug peddlers as they are not better or of more value than the others including those four Nigerians. They committed a death penalty offense, they were convicted, they exhausted their rights of appeal and clemency petition and therefore should face the consequence of their action.
But the funny thing is that the same Australia that is now throwing tantrums over its two drug dealing citizens, looks the other way without an outcry when countries like Saudi Arabia chops off peoples heads on any given Friday or China puts their own death penalty offenders to death or even America's States especially Texas, sends its own convicts to the death chambers. So what is different now or is it because it is Indonesia and they felt like they can intimidate and bully them around? Colombian Pablo Escobar was executed for drug offences, admitted his was even without trial or due process; and similarly have so many other drug dealers perished in the war against drugs particularly in Mexico. So what is the Australian Prime Minister suggesting or that Australians are too special a people to be put to death for violating another country's death penalty law. Good enough the government in Jarkata was not easily intimidate nor caved in to the likes of Australian and the rest is now but history, having put to death those drug peddlers including two Australians, one French, four Nigerians, one Indonesian and one Brazilian. Icheoku says with four Nigerians among the executed, pundits are seriously now wondering whether Nigeria has effectively become a narco state? This conjures Bola Tinubu and Buruji Kashamu's alleged drug dealing as Icheoku wonders whether they would have lived to become a leading political player and an elected senator of the federal Republic respectively had they pried their trade in Indonesia.