On November 18, 1992, agents of the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Customs Service arrested
Musa, Jack Spencer, for conspiring to import in excess of one kilogram of
heroin.
Jack Musa Gowon who was 23 years old
at that time was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for the allegation of
smuggling heroin from source countries,1 such as Thailand or Burma, via
non-source countries, such as Switzerland or Austria
Jack Musa Gowon protested vehemently
through his legal team that he was innocent and was framed up and his
protest were ignored by the Jury and rather was harshly
sentenced to 324 months in prison followed by five years of supervised
release.
Musa timely appealed,
challenging the admission into evidence of the Hotel Guide, the sufficiency of
the evidence supporting his conviction, and the district court's upward
adjustment of his base offense level on the basis that he was an organizer or
leader in the conspiracy
When the appeal to quash his
conviction failed, Musa took that decision in his stride believing set
back like this is not end of his life .
As an inmate of Taft Correctional
Facility, Musa Jack Gowon was a role model and a legal adviser to all the
inmates.
He was well behaved and a source of
inspiration to co- inmates who have given up on life. The
prison warden loved and worshiped the ground he tread on .
Permit me to mention that Musa enrolled
in one of the universities around and successfully graduated with a degree in
Law as a prison inmate .
This commendable act of Leadership
did not go unnoticed and he was rewarded severally by prison authorities .
While all these were going on,
Musa's family has never stopped fighting to get him out of prison and
calls for his release began to grow louder.
Happy to report that President Obama
heard the calls for Musa's release and acted in that regard by granting him a
parole .
Musa walked out of Taft
Correctional Facility Bakersfield California as a free man on November 2nd and
he is currently at ICE Detention Center Bakersfield CA where he will be
deported back to Nigeria any moment from now .
Musa Jack Ngonaadi is grateful to
his Dad, General Yakubu Gowon, his friends and his relatives from his maternal
side who stood by him and supported him also all through the period of
his unjust incarceration that he did not commit the crime he was wrongly
accused of
Musa will narrate his own side of
the story very soon and he is grateful to God who kept him alive and well to
see this day.
This article was written by
Barrister Chukwudi Iwuchukwu, the Principal founder of Visage Media.
