Akwa Ibom Court has jailed a mother of five and the Secretary of Oko Ita Village Council for life imprisonment for their involvement in the murder of two hired assassins.
The woman, Idongesit Emmanuel Udo, 47, and Joseph Ekpo Atai, 61, were found guilty of conspiring to kill Udo’s landlord, Emaeyak Kenneth James.
The Akwa Ibom Court in Uyo heard that Udo hired the assassins, Ikenna Emeka and Nelson Akaniyene, for N40,000 but they failed to carry out the act.
It was gathered that in a bid to recover her money, Udo reported the assassins to Atai, who then sent thugs to beat Emeka to death. Edet later died after testifying in court.
While some of the youths involved in the beating that occurred on April 28, 2017 remain at large since the trial commenced in Ibiono Ibom, before it got to Uyo where Justice Nkanang, who was transferred from Ibiono Ibom Judicial Division in October 2021, delivered the judgement on extended jurisdiction.
Justice Nkanang, in a two-hour judgement, found Mrs Udo and Ekpo Atai guilty of manslaughter and sentenced them to life confinement.
The presiding Judge also condemned the actions of the convicts and the investigating officer, Inspector Samuel Udoh, who he accused of manipulating evidence to favour them.
He described the case as “a classical case of what Nigerians refer to as complainant turned accused.”
“Nigeria is where it is today because of characters like Inspector Samuel Udoh of the Homicide Section of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the state Police Command, the investigative officer, who manipulated the processes to suit their selfish purposes.”
Besides, the Judge recalled that the prosecution witness, Sergeant Okon Atte, from Ibiono Ibom Police Divisional Headquarters, who first investigated the incident, had stated “categorically in his testimony that he picked up the body of late Ikenna Emeka on the road, close to the compound of the first convict, Mrs Idongesit Emmanuel Udo, at in Oko lta.
“But Inspector Samuel Udo, in an effort to remove the pick-up point of the corpse from the scene of crime, wrote in his own report that Sergeant Okon Atte, picked up the body in the house of the complainant, Nelson Akan Edet, in Ekput, a village said to be three villages away from the scene of crime,” describing it as “a classical case of what Nigerians refer to as complainant turned accused.”
Justice Nkanang said, “Inspector Samuel Udoh recommended that the complainant was a perpetual fraudster and a criminal and that the late Emeka Ikenna, whose home town address is not known, was a criminal, killed by a mob action.”
According to the court, the report was completely different from the extrajudicial statement of the convicts who had confessed that the complainant and the late Emeka Ikenna were taken to the house of the first convict where they were beaten in a bid to have them refund her money.
Justice Nkanang also said that all “the extracts and positions projected by Inspector Samuel Udoh were completely at variance with the established facts of the case, some of which have been asserted even by the defence witnesses including the convicts themselves.”
The court said it was “yet to ascertain the purpose the police inspector was set to achieve in spite of having been assigned to investigate the matter with taxpayers’ money.”
He said, “The attitude of the IPO must have triggered the petition against him by a law firm of Samuel Ikpo and Company alleging pervasion of justice which led to the taking over of the case by the Zone 6 Headquarters of the Nigeria Police, Calabar.”
