NIGERIA. SUPREME COURT AFFIRMS DEATH SENTENCE ON POLICEMAN

July 18, 2006: more than five years after they committed the heinous crime, the Supreme Court has unanimously confirmed the death sentence passed on Constable Benjamin Oyakhire, one of the three police constables who murdered five businessmen on February 17, 2001 on Okene-Lokoja road.
Five justices of the court, who constituted the trial panel held that Oyakhire and his colleagues, Michael Jimoh and Gerson Soba, attached to Mobile Unit of the Nigeria Police in Lokoja, Kogi State, were guilty of the murder charge. The apex court dismissed an appeal by Oyakhire challenging the death sentence passed on him by a High Court and Court of Appeal. Justice Francis Tabai, in his lead judgment, said, “This case represents the height of man’s inhumanity to man. “The appellant and his co-accused police constables employed by the nation to protect the lives and properties of its citizenry embarked on this unlawful mission and in their brazen brutality terminated the lives of these five innocent and defenceless victims, with unimaginable damage to their loved ones and families back at their various homes.
“The case demonstrates the regrettable reality that the numerous police checkpoints along our highways only give the citizenry a false sense of security.” (Sources: Nigerian Tribune, 18/07/2006)