Death by hanging
Lecturer sentenced to death by hanging for armed robbery on Akure-Ilesha expressway
The Akure Division of the Ondo State High Court has sentenced Shittu Isiaka, a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti in Ekiti State, to death by hanging for armed robbery.
Justice Omolara Adejumo delivered the judgment on Friday after finding the defendant 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. 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.
Prosecution counsel John Dada Joshua told the court that the incident occurred on July 5, 2017, at about 11 a.m. along Ibuji on the Akure-Ilesha Expressway. Joshua said 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.
Testifying before the court, Olowoyeye stated that he knew the defendant before the incident. He recounted that Isiaka and two others hired him in Ilesa to transport cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke for N20,000. The men paid N8,000 upfront and promised to pay the balance after the trip.
The situation turned suspicious, according to the victim, when they asked him to reverse the vehicle into a bush near a primary school at Ibuji. One of the men sitting beside him suddenly produced a gun while the defendant sat close to him in the front seat.
Olowoyeye 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.
Police Inspector Kehinde Omotosho testified that highway patrol officers brought the victim naked to the Igbara-Oke Police Station, where he made a statement implicating the defendant.
In his defence, Isiaka denied the allegations, stating 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 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, Justice 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. Justice 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.
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