Adaudu Shaibu V. The State (2017)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

AMINA ADAMU AUGIE, J.S.C.

The Appellant was accused of causing the death of “Ajari Mala Sule” [the deceased] by stabbing him with a spear on the chest, and also of voluntarily causing hurt to “Awawu Molo” and “lbrahim Pemida” by stabbing them with a spear on the left arm and mouth respectively.

The Obangede High Court of Kogi State [trial Court] found him guilty of the offence of culpable homicide punishable with death and convicted and sentenced him to death accordingly. The trial Court, however, struck out the other two heads of the Charge because they “should not have been joined to an offence as serious as the one in the first head – – especially when the alleged victims are different.

At the trial Court, the Prosecution called six witnesses and also tendered Exhibit 3, his statement to the Police, where the Appellant stated that he came home from school to meet the deceased and his brother beating his mother, and that it was when they brought out “charms, guns and animal hun (sic)”, that he entered his room and carried a sharp spear, which he used in hunting, to defend himself; and

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it was after the deceased’s brother, Yakubu, shot at him and the bullet missed that he used the sharp spear on the deceased’s chest.

The Appellant’s mother, Seriya Shaibu, testified as PW6 for the Prosecution, and she explained that there was a fight between one Obo and her stepson, Lasisi, over a girlfriend, and it was the said Obo that beat her. she insisted that the deceased did not beat her and that the Appellant came home “after the people fighting had left.

In his defence as DW1, the Appellant gave a different account of what happened. He said that when he came home from school, the deceased and his friends came to his house to abuse him, and it was while he was struggling to wrest the spear from the deceased, during the fight that ensued that the spear pierced him in the chest.

In his Judgment delivered on 20/6/98, the learned trial Judge, Olusiyi, J., found that he was an “untruthful and unreliable witness”, and rejected “his viva voce evidence in toto.” He further held that-

Standing on its own, the Prosecutions case is solid, formidable and unassailable. The admission of the Accused in Exhibit 3 that he used a

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spear on the chest of the deceased, corroborated the evidence of PW4 and PW5, thus lending weight to the case of the Prosecution.

The Appellant’s case at the trial Court was focused on self-defence, but his complaint in the Appeal filed at the Court below centered on the difference in what he said in Exhibit 3 and his defence as DW1.

The Court below expressed surprise that the complaint was not that the trial Court erred in not upholding the plea of self-defence, nonetheless, it held as follows on the issue of the said differences –