Three of the eight defendants accused of raping and killing Olajide Blessing Omowumi, 24, a student at the University of Ilorin, on June 2, 2021, have been found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
The Kwara State government filed suit No. KWS/33c/c/2021 against the defendants, charging them with 11 counts that included armed robbery, illegal possession of firearms, and rape.
The three defendants were found guilty of culpable homicide punishable by death, conspiracy to commit robbery, and conspiracy to murder in the ruling rendered by Justice Ibrahim Adebayo Yusuf of the Kwara state High Court, Ilorin, on Tuesday.
Even the judge sobbed openly for more than two minutes as she described how the deceased was raped and eventually died in the 165-page typewritten judgment, which was read by Justice Yusuf to nearly the entire courtroom.
The judge concluded that the gang intended to steal and rape people without intending to kill anyone, but he added that their actions resulted in homicide.
Salman Jawondo, the prosecution’s attorney and a former attorney general and commissioner for justice, commented on the verdict. Jawondo began the case as Kwara State’s attorney general and finished it as a private attorney providing pro bono services. In order to run in the APC primary elections for the general elections in 2023, he resigned.
After the court hearing, Jawondo provided a summary of the verdict to reporters.
The primary offenders, the first, second, and third defendants, were found guilty of culpable homicide, which carries a death sentence, conspiracy to commit robbery, and conspiracy to kill. They were thus given a death sentence. That is the most. Due to a provision of the Armed Robbery Act, the only option available to the court is death. The death penalty is therefore imposed for culpable homicide in accordance with Section 221 of the Penal Code. They were thus given a death sentence.
Although the third defendant, who was also found guilty of rape, received a life sentence, this is unimportant. When someone is sentenced to life in jail, nothing is improved.
The fourth and fifth accused were convicted of conspiring to steal and taking money from the deceased’s bank account, respectively. You may be aware that when they killed her, they took her phone, SIM card, and ATM card. They obtained some money through a transfer, totaling around N149,000, and changed her password using the fourth and fifth defendants’ expertise in computer manipulation.
They were found guilty of conspiracy and theft. As a result, they received concurrent sentences of three years in prison. Three years for the primary offense and one year for the conspiracy, starting on the day of their arrest. They have already spent nearly 1.5 years in jail.
“The last three, numbers six, seven, and eight, narrowly escaped. They’re really fortunate. If you consider their involvement, all they did was help dispose of stolen items.
The irony of the situation is that all of the participants are relatively young men—19, 23, etc. It’s really too bad. And that indicates that we must struggle to secure our future in this nation, he continued.
Olajide Blessing Omowumi, a 24-year-old student at the University of Ilorin, was allegedly raped and murdered, and eight accused people were hauled before the Kwara State High Court in Ilorin.
Abdulazeez Ismail, Ajala Moses Oluwatimileyin (also known as Jacklord), Oyeyemi Timileyin Omogbolahan, Abdulkarim Shuaib (also known as Easy), Kareem Oshioyemi Rasheed (also known as Rasworld), Abdullateef Abdulrahman, Daud Bashir Adebayo (also known as Bashman), and Akande Taiye Oladoja are
Recall that on June 2, 2021, the Kwara State Police Command verified the suspected rape and murder of a 300-level University of Ilorin student at her apartment in the Tanke neighborhood of the Ilorin city.
The deceased was a student in the Agricultural Science Department from the Oke-Opin community in the Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara state. She was claimed to have been living with her older sister, Dr. Dupe Shittu, at Tanke area till her death.
With regard to an 11-count charge involving armed robbery, illegal possession of firearms, and rape, the defendants were brought before the court by the Kwara State government in suit No. KWS/33c/c/2021.
Three of the defendants, Abdulazeez Ismail, Ajala Moses Oluwatimileyin (also known as Jacklord), and Oyeyemi Timileyin Omogbolahan, were accused of conspiring together “to rob one Olajide Gloria Blessing Omowumi, also known as “Wumi,” of her Samsung Galaxy A2 Core smartphone and carted away other items, including one black Acer aspire, one series laptop, one Samsung drive, one
Five further people were charged by the prosecution with assisting and abetting the reception of stolen goods, including the Samsung Galaxy A2 Core phone and other technological devices that were the profits of armed robbery.
In addition, it was alleged that Abdulazeez Ismail, Kareem Oshioyemi Rasheed, and Abdulkarim Shuaib had stolen money from the deceased’s GTB account.
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