The Akure Division of the Ondo State High Court has sentenced a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Shittu Isiaka, to death by hanging for armed robbery, delivering justice nearly nine years after the crime was committed.
Justice Omolara Adejumo handed down the judgment 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.
The 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 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.
Testifying before the court, Olowoyeye stated 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.
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.
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.
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.
During the trial, Isiaka denied the allegations, telling the court he was not involved in the robbery and also denied injecting the victim, 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 medical report 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, noting there was no eyewitness account of the alleged injection and no medical report to support hospitalization.
She 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 pronounced.
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