Seidu Adeyemi, the boyfriend of Miss Khadijat Oluboyo, daughter of Lasisi Olugbenga Oluboyo, immediate past Deputy Governor of Ondo State, has been sentenced to death.
Adeyemi was sentenced to death by hanging on Wednesday by an Ondo State High Court sitting in Akure.
Khadijat had been declared missing by her parents, and her decomposing corpse later found in a shallow grave under a bed at Adeyemi’s Aratunsi residence in Oke Aro of Akure in July 2018.
Khadijat, popularly known as ‘Princess Nikky’, was also a final-year student of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), before she was brutally murdered.
On July 10, 2018, Adeyemi was nabbed by a special team of detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ondo State Police Command in Akure over Khadijat’s death.
On July 16, 2018, 25-year-old Adeyemi was later charged and arraigned at a Magistrate Court in Akure, the Ondo State capital. He appeared before Chief Magistrate Bob Manuel Victoria at Oke Eda Magistrate Court in Akure before the case was later moved to the Ondo State High Court.
In his verdict on Wednesday, Justice Samuel Bola said the prosecutor had proved the case beyond reasonable doubt. Bola noted that the evidence, which was provided before the court, connected the accused person to the gruesome murder of Khadijat.
He disclosed that the death of the deceased emanated from injuries she sustained from the hands of the accused.
According to the judge, the accused person murdered Khadijat and not the two men he claimed in his conventional statement that he invited to his room.
He added that the act of killing Miss Khadijat was “intentional”, and the claims that she was killed by the two men he invited to his room as an attempt to cover up his evil deed.
”It was the defendant that killed the deceased person and not any two men as he claimed. It was an attempt to cover up that he claimed that two men he invited to his room strangulated the deceased,” he said.
“That he was threatened by the two men cannot exonerate the defendant, because he had the opportunity to the raise the alarm when he said the two men asked him to bring a shovel and digger from the house.
“This court finds it difficult to believe that the two men invited by the deceased murdered her in his room and he dug a shallow grave, where she was buried and he fetched the cement which was used to plaster the grave and he covered it with rug.
“The act of killing the deceased was intentional. Evidence showed that the deceased was last seen with the defendant and she never came out of his room alive, but her decomposing corpse recovered after five days and by criminal law, the convict committed a capital offence and he should die by hanging.”
The judge thereafter passed final judgment.
Addressing newsmen after the judgement, Kola Olawoye, the lead prosecution counsel and Ondo State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, said the state government was interested in the case due to the circumstances that led to the death of Miss Khadijat.
Olawoye, however, said the circumstances leading her death were very unfortunate, noting that justice was served at last and would be a lesson to criminal-like minds.
“The state decided to take up the case in order to know what led to the death of the deceased, and we wanted the defendant to explain to the whole world the part he took in the killing of the lady if any. Thank God the court has done justice to the case today,” he said.
