A Nigerian-born man accused of importing drugs after police found more than 10 kilograms of ice inside a golden statue of a fish has told a court two men threatened to destroy him if he didn't take the haul to Sydney.
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Police allegedly found broken pieces of the statue in a green wheelie bin beside a Kaleen house after they intercepted the package and arrested Jackson Igwebuike, 34, moments before he boarded a Murrays bus bound for Sydney in 2015.
He was charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug and pleaded not guilty. He is on trial in the ACT Supreme Court.
Commonwealth prosecutor Caroline Dobraszczyk said in her opening address the drugs were discovered when three 20 kilogram statues that arrived in a shipping crate from China were x-rayed by Border Force officers at Port Botany on October 8.
Officers opened up one statue of a fish and discovered 43 packages filled with a white crystalline substance and wrapped in duct tape.
Forensic tests revealed the packets contained a combined total of 10.58 kilograms of methamphetamine, with the pure amount weighing about 8.47 kilograms.
Federal police swapped the drugs with an "inert substance" before the fish statue was put back together and repacked.
Police who tapped Mr Igwebuike's phones alleged they intercepted communication between the accused and another man in Igbo - a language commonly spoken in south-east Nigeria - and between the accused and a Sydney-based freight company.
The man prosecutors allege was Mr Igwebuike, using the name "Solomon David", asked the company for the package to be delivered to an address in Kaleen.
A few days later, he was captured on CCTV footage making a payment of $594.88 into the freight company's account before he emailed them a scanned copy of the deposit receipt.
The packages were later dropped at a property in Kaleen and undercover police watched as Mr Igwebuike allegedly collected the boxes and took them to a second address in the same suburb.
In a phone conversation with another man soon after, the accused allegedly discussed transport and meeting places in Sydney.
Mr Igwebuike was in a queue at the Jolimont Centre for a Murrays bus to Sydney when he was arrested the morning of October 17.
Police seized two mobile phones, a Nigerian passport in the name of the accused and a suitcase filled with 43 packages of the drug substitute.
Mr Igwebuike said from the witness box on Wednesday he hadn't known the statues had been filled with drugs.
He said he'd been approached by two men in a carpark at the University of Canberra, where he was a postgraduate student, and had been asked to pick up some decorative glass items.
The court heard he had been "surprised" when the two men later showed up at his house after he had collected the parcels and broke the statues open.
When Mr Igwebuike said he wasn't ready to take the packages to Sydney because he didn't know what was inside, one of the men lifted his shirt to reveal a black revolver. He then showed the accused a photo of his wife on his phone, he said.
"He said if I didn't take it they would kill my wife and they would destroy me. I was petrified ... so I kept quiet."
Under cross-examination from Ms Dobraszcyk, Mr Igwebuike denied he was making up his interactions with the two men.
"I've not done this thing before I do not know anything about it."
He said he'd been "deceived" by the man he had spoken to over the phone and thought he was picking up statues.
The trial continues in front of Justice Hilary Penfold.
