THE Lagos High Court sitting at the Tafawa Balewa Square has convicted and sentenced to death, a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) driver, Andrew Ominikoron, for the murder of a 22-year-old fashion designer, Bamise Ayanwola.
In a judgment that lasted over two and half hours, Justice Serifat Sonaike held that the prosecution, the Lagos State Government, successfully proved beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offence.
The judge held, “that for the death of Oluwabamise Ayanwola, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy upon you.”
Although there was no eye witness account of the incident, the court relied on a series of circumstantial evidence, the evidence of the pathologist, and the dying declaration of the victim all of which the judge held pointed solely to the defendant as the last person to see her before her death on February 26, 2022.
The court also convicted the defendant for the rape of a 29-year-old lady, Nneka Maryjane Ozezulu, on November 25, 2021.
The court noted that the defendant had a history of raping female passengers in his BRT bus as submitted by the extrajudicial statements of two victims of his crime – the testimony of Ozezulu, and the terrifying voice note sent out by Bamise just before she died.
The court said the voice note showed that Bamise did not consent to sexual intercourse with the defendant.
The court, however, held that medical reports neither showed that the late Bamise was penetrated nor was any semen found in her.
This, it said, meant that the action of rape was not concluded or that it failed.
The court, therefore, discharged the defendant on the offence of rape of the late Bamise but found him guilty for the lesser offence of attempted rape which was successfully proved by the prosecution.
The court also discharged the defendant on the offence of conspiracy insisting that the prosecution had not proved the same.
The prosecution, led by the Director of Public Prosecution in Lagos, Dr Babajide Martins, had asked the court to apply the maximum sentence while the defence counsel, Abayomi Omotubora, pleaded in his allocutus that the judge should temper justice with mercy.
