By Oyibo Salihu
Lokoja
Kogi state High Court sitting in Koton-Karfi, Kogi Local Government Area, yesterday sentenced a ritualist, Ibrahim Mohammed, to death for killing his siblings.
The accused was tried in the court for robbery and culpable homicide of the two brothers namely Mohammed Kudu Abubakar and Umar Tanko Abubakar.
The Police First Information Report said the accused, Ibrahim Muhammed, sometime in January 2016, at Kungbani Village in Kogi local government area within the Kogi state Judicial Division, robbed Tanko Abubakar and his brother, Ibrahim Mohammed, of his Toyota Carina ‘E’ Wagon with Registration Number Niger, BDA 902 AA, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 298 (a) of the Penal Code.
Though the accused pleaded not guilty to the charges, the presiding Judge, Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye, while delivering his judgement said:
“I hold that after poisoning the two brothers as the accused confessed, in his downright criminality, he hit their heads with pestle (Exhibit P7) to hasten their annihilation. And, in order to avoid any trace of his brutal and inhuman act, the accused buried the dead bodies of Tanko and Mohammed in his compound.
“Unfortunate for him, since nothing is hidden under the sky, nemesis caught up with him. By the application of an unusual but most excellent investigatory dexterity, The Special Anti-Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police, Kogi State, exposed the apparently hidden crime.
“By your own word, after poisoning both Tanko and Mohammed and they refused to die, you used a pestle to hit them on their heads. That was a brutal homicide committed with determination and ruthlessness. The manner you committed it, by your own description, make it a high level of exceptional wickedness that it can only be properly marked by death sentence, which is the only sentence I can pass on you.”
Justice Alaba, therefore, sentenced him to death by hanging until he died.