1st November, 2012
A Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja on Wednesday sentenced a 31-year-old electrician, Abdulkadri Issa, to death by hanging for killing a woman, Mrs Catherine Kate-Amadi, in 2006.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Justice Iyabo Kasali convicted Issa of a charge of murder preferred against him by the Lagos State Government.
The judge held that circumstantial evidence before the court placed Issa as the last person seen at the scene of the murder.
Kasali held that Issa failed to convince the court that the blood-soaked clothes, tendered by the prosecution as an exhibit, were not his own.
She said there were also discrepancies in Issa’s evidence before the court and his statement at the Festac Police Station.
“The sentence of the court upon you, Issa, is that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead. May the Lord have mercy on your soul,” the judge said.
NAN reports that Issa was arraigned before the court on Dec. 7, 2009. He had pleaded not guilty.
The prosecution had said that Issa stabbed the woman to death with a knife on Oct. 30, 2006 at her residence located at Block 3, Flat 8, LSPDC Estate, Ebute Meta, Lagos.
The prosecution, led by Mr Adegboyega Bajulaye had submitted that Issa killed Kate-Amadi for reasons best known to him, after she brought him into her residence to repair some electrical appliances.
A prosecution witness had testified that Issa was seen inside the apartment with his clothes soaked with the deceased’s blood.
According to the prosecution, he locked himself inside a toilet to evade arrest when neighbours came into the apartment.
NAN reports that Issa had in the statement at the police station claimed that he was locked inside the toilet by two men.
He, however, admitted before the court that he locked himself inside the toilet when he heard noise being made outside by the deceased’s neighbours.
Meanwhile, his counsel, Mr Yemi Omodele, told NAN that he would appeal the judgment.
“We are going to appeal against the judgment because it goes against the weight of evidence before the court.