Raheem Ayinde V. The State (2018)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

AMINA ADAMU AUGIE, J.S.C.

The Appellant, and one other Accused Person, Kehinde Ajumobi, were tried and convicted by the Kwara State High Court for the offence of armed robbery. They allegedly robbed the occupants of a compound at Budo-Nuru Area, Ilorin, and dispossessed them of valuables, including money, phone, and wrist watch, while “armed with a gun, cutlass, broken bottle, and dangerous weapons”.

The Appellant, who was the second Accused, denied the allegation and put forward a defence of mistaken identity. He claimed that he went to see the first Accused in his house, which is in the same vicinity as the scene of crime, and while first Accused was seeing him off, they were accosted and attacked by two men, who accused them of being the robbers that operated that night. The trial Court, in its Judgment of 11/7/2012, rejected his defence and found him guilty. He was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment without option of fine.

Aggrieved, the Appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division.

But the Court of Appeal, in its Judgment delivered on

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19/12/2013, affirmed the trial Court’s decision, including the conviction and sentence imposed on him. The Appellant appealed to this Court with a Notice of Appeal containing three Grounds of Appeal, which was later amended with the leave of this Court, and the said Amended Notice of Appeal contains seven Grounds of Appeal.

However, the Appellant appears to have abandoned Grounds 1 and 2 of the Grounds of Appeal since he formulated two issues for Determination in his Brief of Argument from Grounds 3 to 7 of the Grounds of Appeal only; that is –

1. Whether the Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal came to a justifiable conclusion in law and equity when their Lordships held that the Appellant was sufficiently identified as one of the armed robbers that committed the offence in issue and that the discrepancies between the Appellants Extra, Judicial Statement and his oral testimony in Court relate to substance and not form such that the Appellants defence of mistaken identity may be thrown away with a wave of hand. (Grounds 3, 4 and 7)
2. Whether the Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal were correct in law and equity when their Lordship held that the Learned Trial

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Judge did not place reliance on the statement (oral confession) that the Appellant purportedly made to PW8 in coming to the conclusion that the prosecution proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. (Grounds 5 and 6).

Having not formulated issues from Grounds 1 and 2 of the Grounds of Appeal, the said Grounds 1 and 2 serve no purpose in this Appeal; they are abandoned and are accordingly struck out – Ekunola V. CBN (2013) LPELR-20391 (SC).

The Respondent adopted the issues formulated, but I find them verbose, and contrary to the principle that such issues must not only be clear and terse “but most also be hard and to the point” – see A.G., Lagos State V. Sowande (1992) 8 NWLR (pt. 261) 589, wherein Tobi, JCA (as he then was) added that:

The language should not be bombastic, fluid and vague. (It) should not be loaded. Short simple sentences have a way of presenting the issues to an appellate Court better than long and tedious sentences of a rigmarole nature.

Be that as it may, issue 1 raises the questions of whether the Appellant was sufficiently identified as one of the Armed Robbers, and whether discrepancies between his