A 38-year-old Nigerian man was jailed for four-and-a half years and fined €5,000 on Tuesday after he admitted to importing almost 600 grams of cannabis grass into Malta nine years ago.

He was also ordered to pay the costs of the case while all of his moveable and immovable property is to be confiscated.

Eshiemokhai Yakubu Okhiulu, who was born in Nigeria but lived in Sicily, admitted to the charges during what was to be the beginning of his trial by jury.

He pleaded guilty of importing 593 grammes of cannabis grass with a street value of €14,825, conspiring to deal in the drug and the possession of the drug in circumstances denoting it was not for his personal use.

According to the bill of indictment, on December 15, 2014 at about 9.30pm drug squad police stopped Okhiulu on his arrival to Malta, from Sicily, aboard the Catamaran.

During a luggage search they found raw meat in his luggage and, in his haversack, they found cannabis grass in a yellow plastic bag that was wrapped in cling film. It turned out to be 593 grammes of cannabis grass of 7.5% purity.

Okhiulu told police he had come to Malta to visit his girlfriend who was pregnant and he wanted to surprise her. But he did not have enough money to travel and asked his friend, a certain Toto, for help. Toto paid for the ticket and gave him the cannabis to make money out of it.

Although admitting to the charges Okhiulu took the witnesses stand and said that while he was carrying the drugs, he was not aware they were drugs. This contradicted the version he had given to police when he released a statement, the prosecution said.

Okhiulu said he came to Malta to be a builder. His girlfriend, who was pregnant, had come to Malta before him and he wanted to come to surprise her. He had never been to Malta before.

A friend of his, called Toto, gave him a package and told him someone would be waiting for him at the seaport and he was to give him a job in return for the package.

When police stopped him, he said, he asked them to give him 20 minutes to go find the person outside but they did not allow him to and took him to a police station where officers told him to name two black people who were involved in drug deals - but he could not.

He said that since his arrest, nine years ago, he spent 27 month in prison before being granted bail. Since then he built a life and had two businesses: a barber shop and a grocer. He said he paid taxes.

“Please I’m begging… That day I took that bag I was looking for the opportunity… I do not deny I was in possession of the bag, but I did not come here to sell,” he told Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrara.

During submissions on punishment, lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace, representing the accused, called on the court to take into consideration the fact that the accused pleaded guilty, the crime happened nine years ago and he was now a reformed family man with a child and another on the way.

Lawyer Maria Francesca Spiteri, who is representing the Attorney General’s office together with lawyer Daniel Tabone, said that one could not ignore the conspiracy element the accused had admitted to and the amount of drugs involved.

She said that the bill of indictment was filed 14 months after the accused was arraigned.

The delay should not benefit the accused since this was due to “delaying tactics on the part of the accused”.

The delay in reaching trial stage was due to many failed attempts at reaching a plea-bargaining agreement. She said the AGs office could not agree to what he was requesting because it was below the minimum punishment prescribed by law.

When the trial resumed for sentencing in the afternoon, Scerri Herrera noted that the accused was not a vulnerable person at the time of commission of the offence.

She noted that there was no fixed reduction in punishment for admission of guilt before trial and the accused had wasted a lot of time for the court, prosecution and lawyers by taking years before registering an admission of guilt.

Scerri Herrera said that athough cannabis has been legalised, this was not the case when the drug was not intended for personal use.

She jailed Okhiulu four-and-a-half years and fined him €5,000.