A Lagos High Court in Ikeja, on Thursday, sentenced a middle-aged man, Kehinde Olude, to death by hanging for the murder of a lecturer, Mr. R.A Adisa, of the College of Education, Okene, Kogi State, on November 29, 2000. Olude was said to have killed Adisa in Alafon Village along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and robbed him of his Honda car which he was helping him (the deceased) to drive to Okene. The judgment came about 11 years after the incident and seven years after Olude was arraigned by the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions on May 9, 2005. The judge, Justice Joseph Oyewole, said there was sufficient evidence to warrant the court’s “inevitable conclusion” that Olude actually murdered Adisa. “The only statutory punishment for murder is death penalty. Accordingly, the sentence of the court upon Kehinde Olude is that you be hanged by neck until you be dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul,” Oyewole held. The judge relied on the testimonies of the five prosecution witnesses, including Olude’s father, Simeon Olude. Adisa, then a graduating student of the Institute of Management and Technology, Ketu, was in Lagos to buy the Honda car and engaged Olude to help him drive it to Okene. The condemned man, after killing the deceased, went home with the car, claiming its ownership. However, his father, knowing the financial status of his son, ordered that the car be taken off his premises. Olude then took the said car to his friend, Julius Adeloye, a builder, who also testified for the prosecution in the course of the trial. About a month after, Olude told Adeloye to help him sell the car because his uncle who sent the car to him had asked him to do so and use the proceeds to travel to London. In the testimony of one of the policemen that investigated the killing, Mr. Michael Onalu, the condemned man confessed to the crime in four separate statements. Olude was also said to have taken members of the team to places, including the scene of the crime, where they recovered the bones of the deceased. The judge rejected Olude’s testimony during trial that the deceased kept the car in his possession and travelled without returning. Oyewole, who said the claim was “an afterthought,” added, “It is strange that his purported complaint to the police has no documentary backing and defies logic for while he could drive the said car to PW3 (Adeloye) to hide was unable to drive it to a police station for safe keeping.” One of Olude’s colleagues at the College of Education Okenne, Mr. Olutayero Kehinde, also a prosecution witness, upon discovering that the deceased was missing from work, proceeded to Lagos who he got information leading to Olude’s arrest.
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