A 24-year-old man, Monday Abbah has been sentenced to death by hanging by an Abeokuta High Court, for killing his colleague, Rapheal Osugbe.
Abbah, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, was convicted on Friday, February 16, 2024, on a one-count charge of murder.
The prosecution counsel informed the court that the convict and the deceased were the staff of the Lexis Plastic Company along the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway and the incident occurred on February 13, 2017.
According to the prosecutor, Abbah worked as a labourer while his late colleague was a truck driver for the company.
“On Feb. 13, 2017, the company’s truck, which was driven by Mr Rapheal Osugbe (deceased), wanted to offload goods; while he was reversing, the truck mounted on some empty containers which were inside a sack that the defendant was arranging.
“The defendant took one of the empty containers and threw it at Osugbe(deceased), who angrily came down from his truck, held onto the defendant and also slapped him, which led to a physical fight.
“In the process, Abbah who was holding on to a knife he uses to remove nylon from the plastic container, stabbed Osugbe in his neck and blood started gushing out. The deceased was immediately rushed to the hospital but unfortunately died on the way due to shortage of blood,” the prosecution said.
Delivering judgment on Friday, Justice O.O Stanley, found Abbah culpable of the charge of murder, saying that the prosecution proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
She convicted and sentenced Abbah, saying that his action does not establish a self-defence and the evidence presented by the prosecution was tenable.
“I hereby sentence you Monday Abbah to death by hanging until you are dead. May God have mercy on you”.
The judge held that no circumstance justified his action of stabbing his victim with a knife ”as it was a physical fight and the deceased was not armed with any dangerous weapon during the fight. It is very unfortunate that anger caused this. I think we have all learnt from this”.
