An Iyaganku Chief Magistrates’ Court sitting in Ibadan yesterday remanded 11 persons for the kidnap and death of an Ibarapa fuel station owner and two young girls. Those remanded were nine Fulani and two Yoruba men.
The defendants include Abubakar Idris, 23; Rabiu Usman, 22; Umar Usman, 22; Usman Saliu, 20; Sahibu Idi, 24; Tiamiyu Isah, 55; Rasak Ramon, 45 and Kate Mohammed, 25.
Others are Umar Ahmadu, 30; Kabiru Adamu, 25 and Muhammadu Abdullahi, 25.
Two of the suspects, Tiamiyu Isah and Rasak Ramon, were private security guards who were absent from work on the day their employer, Adisa, was killed.
The two aged security guards claimed their absence from work on the same day was a coincidence. They denied any knowledge of the abduction and killing of their boss.
The defendants were in arraigned on a seven-count charge, bordering on conspiracy, kidnapping, causing death and unlawful dispossession of cell phone.
The Magistrate, Mrs O.A. Akande, who did not take their plea, remanded all the defendants in Abolongo correctional facility, pending the outcome of the case file from Oyo State Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP).
Akande, thereafter, adjourned the case till May 4, for hearing. The prosecutor, Insp Gbemi Adedeji, told the court that the defendants conspired together to commit the offence.
She said: “On January 2, around 7:55p.m. the defendants, armed with AK-47 rifles and cutlasses, kidnapped Alhaja Sherifat Adisa, aged 50, owner of Subawah filing station on Idere road, Igboora, Oyo State.
“The defendants dispossessed her of one cell phone and N500,000 cash, and later killed her. The accused persons also caused the death of one-year-old Toriola Kudirat and eight-year-old Omowumi Babatunde.”
Adedeji said the offences were contrary to Section 2 and punishable under Section 4(2) of the Oyo State Kidnapping (Prohibition) Law, 2016.
The prosecutor also said that the offences contravened Section 1(2) of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provision) Act, Cap. RII, Vol. 14, Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2004, as well as Section 316(3) and punishable under Sections 319(1) and 516 of the Criminal Code of Oyo State, 2000.
Alhaja Adisa’s body was found around 11p.m. same day she was kidnapped close to her station. She was a member of Independent Petroleum Marketers (IPMAN) in the Idere area of Ibarapa.
During their parade by the police recently, the Commissioner of Police, Ngozi Onadeko, said: “The prime suspect, Jare Mohammed, inserted his SIM card in a Nokia phone belonging to the deceased, Alhaja Adisa Sherifat, which was taken away from her during the robbery operation that claimed her life.”
