The appellate court, presided over by Justice Omolara Adejumo, delivered the judgment after finding the defendant guilty of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery.
During the trial, the prosecution counsel, John Joshua, told the court that the incident occurred on July 5, 2017, along Ibuji on the Akure-Ilesha Expressway.
One of the victims, Olowoyeye, who testified before the court, said he knew the defendant before the incident. He explained that Isiaka and two other men had hired him in Ilesa to transport cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke for a fee of N20,000, adding that the suspects paid N8,000 upfront with a promise to pay the balance after the trip.
According to the witness, suspicion arose when the passengers asked him to divert the vehicle into a bush path near a primary school at Ibuji. He told the court that one of the men suddenly produced a gun while Isiaka sat in the front seat of the vehicle.
Olowoyeye said the assailants dragged him out of the vehicle, seized the key, his mobile phone and cash, tied his hands and legs and abandoned him in the bush.
The victim further alleged that the defendant injected him with a substance before tying him to a tree. He said he later managed to roll through the bush until he reached the highway, where he was rescued by police patrol officers who took him to a hospital.
He told the court that he passed bloody urine for several days and spent about 15 days receiving treatment.
A police witness, Inspector Kehinde Omotosho, testified that the victim was brought to the Igbara-Oke Police Station by highway patrol officers, where he made a statement implicating the defendant in the robbery.
However, while defending himself during the trial, Isiaka denied the allegations, insisting that he had no involvement in the robbery. He also denied injecting the victim with any substance, arguing that he was not a medical practitioner and had no licence to administer injections.
The defendant further told the court that investigators failed to present any syringe or item allegedly used in the crime and that no medical report was tendered to support the victim’s claim.
In her judgment, Justice Adejumo held that the prosecution failed to establish the offence of endangering life under Section 135(1) of the Evidence Act.
The court noted that there were no eyewitness accounts of the alleged injection and no medical report to support the claim, stressing that it would be unsafe to rely solely on the testimonies of the victim and another witness without corroborating medical evidence.
Consequently, the court acquitted Isiaka on the third count but held that the prosecution had established sufficient evidence linking him to the robbery.
Justice Adejumo therefore convicted the defendant of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery, sentencing him to life imprisonment for conspiracy and death by hanging for armed robbery.
“The sentence of the court upon you is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” the judge ruled.
