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The Akure Division of the Ondo State High Court has sentenced a lecturer, Shittu Isiaka, at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, Ekiti State, to death by hanging for armed robbery.
Justice Omolara Adejumo delivered the judgement after finding the lecturer guilty of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery.
Isiaka was first arraigned before the court on November 26, 2018 on a three-count charge of conspiracy to commit armed robbery, armed robbery and endangering life.
However, the court discharged and acquitted him on the third count of endangering life, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove the allegation beyond reasonable doubt.
The prosecution counsel, John Dada Joshua, told the court that the incident occurred on 5 July 2017 at about 11 a.m. along Ibuji on the Akure-Ilesha Expressway.
Joshua said that the defendant and other accomplices still at large robbed a commercial driver, Olatunji Olowoyeye, of his Nissan Cabstar vehicle with registration number XJ 214 KTU at gunpoint.
While testifying, Olowoyeye told the court that he knew the defendant before the incident and that he and two others hired him in Ilesa to transport cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke for N20,000.
According to him, the men paid N8,000 upfront and promised to pay the balance after the trip.
He said the situation turned suspicious when they asked him to reverse the vehicle into a bush near a primary school at Ibuji.
Olowoyeye said one of the men sitting beside him suddenly produced a gun while the defendant sat close to him in the front seat.
He told the court that the men dragged him out of the vehicle, collected the key, his phone and cash, tied his hands and legs and abandoned him in the bush.
The victim further alleged that the defendant injected him with a substance before tying him to a tree.
He said he later rolled himself through the bush until he reached the main road where police patrol officers rescued him and took him to a hospital.
Olowoyeye said he passed bloody urine for days and spent about 15 days receiving treatment.
A witness, Police Inspector Kehinde Omotosho, told the court that highway patrol officers brought the victim naked to the Igbara-Oke Police Station, where he made a statement implicating the defendant.
During the trial, Isiaka denied the allegations. He told the court that he was not involved in the robbery and also denied injecting the victim with any substance, noting that he was not a medical practitioner and had no licence to administer injections.
He also argued that investigators did not present any syringe or other item allegedly used in the crime and that no medical report was tendered to support the victim’s claim.
In her judgment, Adejumo held that the prosecution failed to prove the offence of endangering life as required under Section 135(1) of the Evidence Act.
The judge noted that there was no eyewitness account of the alleged injection and no medical report to support the victim’s claim of hospitalisation.
She ruled that it would be unsafe to rely solely on the testimonies of the victim and another witness without supporting medical evidence and consequently acquitted the defendant on the third count.
However, the court held that sufficient evidence linked Isiaka to the robbery.
Adejumo convicted him of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery, sentencing him to life imprisonment for conspiracy and death by hanging for armed robbery.
“The sentence of the court upon you is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” the judge said.
