Raphael Ude V The State (2016)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

MUSA DATTIJO MUHAMMAD, J.S.C.

This judgment is in respect of Appeals No. SC.64/2013 and No. SC./65/2013.

Appeals No. SC.64/2013

This is an appeal against the judgment of the Owerri Division of the Court of Appeal, the lower Court, delivered on the 27th day of April 2012, affirming the conviction and death sentence of the appellant and two others by the Abia State High Court, the trial Court, Coram S. N. Imo, (Chief Judge as he then was). The latter’s judgment was delivered on the 1st day of July, 2010.

The appellant, Raphael Ude, and nine others were tried on a three count information at the Umuahia High Court for the murder of Sunday Ude, Chief Cornelius Orjiogo and Johnson Onwuegbuchulam contrary to Section 319(1) of the Criminal Code CAP 30 Vol. II laws of the Eastern Nigeria as applicable to Abia State. The offences were committed between the 4th and 5th of January, 2007 at Lokpanta, a community within the Umunneochi Judicial Division of the Abia State High Court.

To establish its case, the respondent called six witnesses. The appellant and the other

accused persons testified on their own behalf and called no other witnesses in their defence. At the end of trial, the appellant and two others, namely, Chukwuma Ilomuanya and David Amaefula, were convicted while the 4th to the 10th accused persons were discharged and acquitted. I shall elaborate on the facts that brought about the appeal at once.

The appellant, others convicted along with him as well as the persons murdered by them all hail from Lokpanta in Umunneochi Local Government Area of Abia State. Lokpanta Youth Movement and the Lokpanta Development Union came into existence, the latter being the first in time, with the objective of enhancing the development of the Lokpanta Community. The former’s rivalry with the latter took an unwholesome trend. Its members serially threatened persons in the community and constituted themselves into a Court adjudicating in all manner of cases. The appellant and his co accused belonged to the youth movement. Their victims were members of the Lokpanta Development Union. Following the youth movement’s resolve to wrestle power from the Lokpanta development Union, its women members staged a demonstration in

support of their organisation on the 3rd January, 2007. The appellant who had been billed to become the youth movement president said to have sponsored the demonstration. In the course of the demonstration, which eventually degenerated into a riot, the deceased were visited and subjected to abuse and torture in their respective houses by the appellant and other members of the youth movement. By the 4th of January, 2007, the deceased persons along with PW4 were rounded up, taken to the market square where they were flogged and thereafter transported on motorcycles to a bush on a hill by the Lokpanta and Agwu border. At the hill, the deceased were brutally murdered and their dismembered bodies burnt. PW4, who was also forcefully transported by their abductors, escaped the clutch of the assassins by jumping into a pit and fleeing to safety.

The appellant denied taking part in the murder of the deceased and insists that he is implicated by his detractors.

At the end of trial, the Court preferred the case of the respondent and convicted the appellant and the 2 other accused persons as charged. Appellant’s appeal to the Court below was dismissed

thus the instant appeal on a Notice containing four grounds on 2nd July, 2012.

At the hearing of the appeal, parties having identified their briefs adopted same as their arguments for and against the appeal. The four issues distilled by the appellant as having arisen for the determination of the appeal read:-

1. Whether the quality of eye-witness evidence relied upon by the Court below in affirming the conviction of the Appellant by the trial Court is not questionable and doubtful and therefore insufficient to sustain the affirmation of conviction of the Appellant by the Court below. Ground 1
2. Whether the Court below was not wrong in holding that the prosecution demolished the Appellants alibi when indeed the alibi given to the police at the earliest opportunity was not found to be false. Ground 2
3. Whether the Court below was not wrong in affirming the trial Courts decision that the Appellant counseled and procured other accused persons to kill the deceased in the absence of specific intention and positive acts of encouragement. Ground 3

Whether the Court below was not wrong in