A Nigerian police officer who was dismissed for shooting a football fan to death three years ago has finally been jailed for life.
The now-convict, Olalekan Ogunyemi has been on trial after killing Kolade Johnson in 2019.
He was attached to the defunct-Special Anti-Cultism Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) when he committed the crime.
According to pulse.ng, he shot Johnson in his lower abdomen at a viewing centre at Mangoro, Ikeja area of Lagos State in 2019.
The deceased was reportedly watching a football match between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur when the policeman shot him.
The ex-officer said after the death of the father of one that it was not his intention to shoot him dead.
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He explained that he joined his unit in conducting a raid at the viewing centre where the deceased was watching the football match, adding that he only shot in the air after his team was mobbed as they attempted to arrest a suspected cultist, pulse.ng reports.
« We heard a distress call that we should move to Mangoro. So, on getting there, we saw a group of guys smoking Indian hemp. We thought they’re cultists and effected an arrest there.
« Suddenly, they mobbed us, me and my boys. So, in terms of escaping them, I fired up.
« I didn’t know how it got to meet the guy in question that was shot dead, I don’t know. I only fired one up,” the convict said, as quoted by the news website.
Ogunyemi was convicted and sentenced on Thursday, September 22, after the Lagos State prosecution counsel, Jubril Kareem, called seven witnesses to testify against him.
A report by a pathologist, Dr Oluwaseun Williams, corroborated the testimonies of the witnesses, revealing that the deceased had suffered six gunshot injuries.
The court, after reviewing all the evidence available to it, found Ogunyemi guilty of the charges proffered against him and sentenced him accordingly.
Pulse
