Court sentences lecturer to death for armed robbery in Oyo

By Boye Oyeyemi

An Ondo State High Court sitting in Akure has sentenced a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, Shittu Isiaka, to death by hanging for armed robbery.

The trial judge, O. M. Adejumo, delivered the verdict after finding the defendant guilty of conspiracy and armed robbery.

However, the court cleared the defendant of a third charge of endangering life, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove the allegation beyond reasonable doubt.

Isiaka, the accused, was initially arraigned before the court in November 2018 on a three-count charge bordering on conspiracy, armed robbery and endangering life.

According to the prosecution, the convict and other accomplices, still at large, robbed a commercial driver, Olatunji Olowoyeye, of his Nissan Cabstar vehicle at gunpoint along the Ibuji axis of the Akure–Ilesha Expressway in July 2017.

In his testimony, Olowoyeye revealed that the defendant and two others had hired him in Ilesa to transport cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke and initially paid part of the agreed fare. However, the situation changed when the men asked him to reverse into a bush near a primary school where one of them pulled out a gun, dragged him out of the vehicle and abandoned him after tying him up.

Delivering judgment, Justice Adejumo held that the evidence presented by the prosecution sufficiently linked the defendant to the robbery and consequently sentenced him to life imprisonment for conspiracy and death by hanging for the armed robbery offence.