Nurse smuggled drugs into jail

A prison nurse caught smuggling drugs and alcohol for inmates has been jailed for three and a half years.

Olawale Jibona, 51, had cannabis resin worth £1,500, a two-litre bottle of whisky disguised as cola and packs of sleeping pills favoured by heroin addicts for the high they produce.

The married father of two, a nurse for 24 years, was stopped by security staff as he returned to work after his lunch break at HMP Brixton.

He was clutching a carrier bag containing a 123 gram block of cannabis resin with a street value of £500. Inside the prison it would have been worth three times that figure, Southwark crown court heard. He also had a Diet Pepsi bottle which was 97 per cent full of whisky with just a small amount of cola to colour the liquid, and stuck to the outside of the bottle were 28 tablets of insomnia drug Zopiclone. The prescription-only medicine, sold in the UK as Zimovane, "heightens euphoria when ingested together with alcohol" and is known to addicts as "zim-zims", said Andrew Mazibrada, prosecuting.

Nigerian-born Jibona, a Dutch citizen who moved to the UK in 1998, is a registered mental health nurse who has been employed by the prison service since 2003.

He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to possessing a class B drug with intent to supply and wilful misconduct in public office on 24 April.

Jibona, of Peckham, now faces the prospect of being struck off the Nursing & Midwifery Council Register.