South African woman jailed 40 years for importing 5.75kg heroin into Nigeria

A 38-year-old South African lady, Ms Will Jessica Ann, has been convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for importing 5.75 kilogrammes of heroin into Nigeria by a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.

The convict was arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, after she was found to have concealed 14 large blocks of heroin weighing 5.75 kilogrammes in her luggage, using her three-year-old son as a cover to beat security checks and evade thorough screening.

However, during the inward clearance of passengers on Qatar Airways flight QR 1433 from Doha to Abuja on July 6, 2026, NDLEA officers unravelled her trick. She initially denied travelling with check-in bags, but after operatives quickly established that the two bags containing the drugs had tags that tallied with the claim tags attached to her passport, she recanted and admitted ownership of the bags, adding that she had forgotten that she checked in the two bags.

She claimed to have travelled from Cambodia through Doha to Abuja.

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Intelligence leading to her arrest indicates that she is a member of a transnational drug trafficking organisation along with her husband/partner, Jan Coenraad De Jager, based in Cambodia, from where they operate their drug network along the Cambodian-South African axis.

The husband has also since been arrested in Johannesburg, South Africa, on July 27, 2026, while attempting to traffic 3.2kg of illicit drugs to Hong Kong.

Ms Will Jessica Ann was subsequently arraigned on a two-count charge in suit number FHC/ABJ/CR/422/2026, bordering on the importation of 5.75kg of heroin and conspiracy to import 5.75kg of heroin into Nigeria, offences to which she pleaded guilty before Justice Obiora Egwuatu of the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.

Delivering his judgment on the matter on Thursday, Justice Egwuatu convicted and sentenced Ms Will Jessica Ann to 15 years in prison on count one and 25 years on count two, bringing the total sentence to 40 years.

The court held that the sentences shall run concurrently.

Reacting to the conviction, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the NDLEA, Brig.-Gen. Mohamed Marwa (retd.), described the judgment as a firm demonstration of the resolve of the Nigerian judiciary to support the agency’s war against drug trafficking and a strong deterrent to transnational drug cartels seeking to use Nigeria as a transit or destination point for hard drugs.

Marwa noted that the case reinforces the agency’s long-standing position that Nigeria will not serve as a soft landing for international drug cartels, stressing that the arrest of the convict’s husband in South Africa barely three weeks later, while attempting a separate trafficking operation to Hong Kong, is clear evidence of the strength of intelligence-sharing and collaboration between the NDLEA and its international partners.

He warned that the agency would continue to strengthen airport interdiction, intelligence-led operations and international collaboration to dismantle transnational drug trafficking networks using Nigeria as a corridor, adding that anyone, regardless of nationality, caught trafficking illicit drugs through Nigerian territory would face the full weight of the law.