The Akure Division of the Ondo State High Court has sentenced a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, Shittu Isiaka, to death by hanging after finding him guilty of armed robbery.

Delivering judgment, Justice Omolara Adejumo held that the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the lecturer participated in a robbery attack on a commercial driver along the Akure-Ilesha Expressway.

Isiaka had been standing trial since November 26, 2018 on a three-count charge bordering on 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. near Ibuji on the Akure-Ilesha Expressway.

According to him, the lecturer (Isiaka) and 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 said he knew the defendant before the incident and explained that Isiaka and two other men had hired him in Ilesa to transport cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke for N20,000.

READ ALSO: Court Restores Four-Year Term For Plateau LG Chairmen

He told the court that the men paid N8,000 upfront and promised to settle the balance after the trip, but events took a suspicious turn when they asked him to reverse the vehicle into a bush near a primary school in Ibuji.

According to the driver, one of the men sitting beside him suddenly produced a gun while the defendant sat close to him in the front seat.

He said the suspects dragged him out of the vehicle, seized the key, his phone and cash, tied his hands and legs and abandoned him in the bush.

Olowoyeye further alleged that the defendant injected him with a substance before tying him to a tree.

Read Also

He said he later managed to roll himself through the bush until he reached the main road, where police patrol officers rescued him and rushed him to a hospital.

The victim told the court he passed bloody urine for several days and spent about 15 days receiving treatment.

A prosecution witness, 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 all allegations. He told the court that he was not involved in the robbery and denied injecting the victim with any substance, arguing that he was not a medical practitioner and had no licence to administer injections.

He also maintained that investigators failed to present any syringe or object allegedly used in the attack and that no medical report was tendered to support the claim.

In her judgment, Adejumo ruled that the prosecution failed to prove the charge of endangering life 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 claim of hospitalisation, stating that it would be unsafe to rely solely on the testimonies of the victim and another witness without supporting medical evidence.

Consequently, the court discharged and acquitted Isiaka on the third count.

However, the court held that the evidence before it sufficiently linked the defendant to the robbery.

Justice Adejumo therefore 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.