A 42-year-old prophet, Segun Philip, and 23-year-old Owolabi Adeeko were on Monday sentenced to death by hanging by an Osun State High Court, sitting in Ikire, for killing a final year student of the Lagos State University, Favour Daley-Oladele, for ritual purposes in 2019.
Justice Christiana Obadina also sentenced Owolabi’s 46-year-old mother, Bola, to two years imprisonment for eating human flesh.
Adeeko and Daley-Oladele met in LASU and were dating before the man invited her to Ikoyi, Osun State, in December 2019.
But while on the visit, Daley-Oladele was lured to Philip’s church also in Ikoyi, where she was drugged and killed with a pestle.
After harvesting some organs from her, the two men buried the deceased’s remains in a shallow grave within the church premises.
The organs harvested from the deceased were reportedly used to prepare a concoction for Owolabi’s mother to improve her business fortune which was nose-diving at the time.
The three defendants were first arraigned before a magistrates’ court in Apomu in January 2020 but were re-arraigned before High Court, Ikire in November 2021, for conspiracy and murder.
During the trial, the prosecution team led by the Solicitor General and Permanent Secretary, Osun State Ministry of Justice, Mrs Adekemi Bello, who appeared with Ajibola Alade, told the court that under interrogation, Owolabi confessed to the police that he used his girlfriend to prepare a meal for money ritual for his mother.
The prosecution team, in the course of the trial, called the investigating police officer that worked on the case and eight other witnesses and tendered several exhibits before the court.
The defendants did not call any witnesses but entered the witness box to testify in defence of their different roles in the matter.
Counsel for the defendants, Adeshina Olaniyan, pleaded for leniency while addressing the court.
Delivering her judgment, Justice Obadina declared that the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt and pronounced Philip and Owolabi guilty of conspiracy and murder.
She sentenced them to death by hanging for murder and 14 years imprisonment for conspiracy, while Owolabi’s mother, who was found guilty of consumption of human flesh, was sentenced to two years imprisonment.
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