Kwara: Alleged murder of college student triggers call for death sentence for ritualists

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Kwara: Alleged murder of college student triggers call for death sentence for ritualists

The alleged murder of Yetunde Lawal, a final year female student of the Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin, has sparked calls for death sentence for masterminds who kill for money ritual purposes.

Amid the intense clamour for death sentence penalty for money ritualists, there are also concerns over refusal by state governors to sign death warrants pronounced by law courts on convicts.

Yetunde, was allegedly killed in Ilorin by one 25-year old Islamic teacher, Abdulrahman Bello, who dismembered her body at his Offa-Garage apartment in Ilorin for money rituals, according to police investigation.

The victim who went missing last Monday, was at a naming ceremony in Ilorin but reportedly abandoned her food to honour a phone call from Abdulrahman Bello, now remanded at the Oke-Kura custodial centre alongside four other accomplices.

DAILY POST gathered that there are over 75 condemned inmates at the Oke-Kura maximum and Mandala custodial centres, Ilorin waiting for the hangman and feeding fat on government resources as their death warrants have not been signed.

Some of the condemned convicts who are all males, according to inside sources, have been there for almost 20 years without any action taken.

The sources blamed the situation on the abolition of execution of condemned prisoners presently in the country.

In a chat with DAILY POST in Ilorin, Abdulrahman Malik, a lawyer, said “it is a settled law that anybody who has been proven in a competent court of law to have consciously killed as the ritualists do, should also face the maximum death sentence.”

He argued that advocates of death sentence for ritualists are right, but the decision should be left for the law courts to determine.

According to Malik, “with regards to the refusal of governors to sign death warrants, it is unfortunate that they don’t appreciate the importance of removing such callous inhuman elements among the citizens of the country.

“In fact their prompt execution will serve as a deterrent to other criminally minded brutes. I therefore, suggest that state governors, henceforth promptly sign the death warrants to reassure the public that such heinous crimes will not go unpunished,” he added.

In his reaction, Afolabi Gambari, another lawyer, argued that based on the law, “rituals should not be seen as offensive, because it is unorthodox way of finding solutions to a problem, but if it is intentional killing or murder simpliciter, then the religion scriptures have provided the punishment for violation.”

Another prominent legal practitioner, Lukman Raji, Enetsud, said the law says “anybody who kills, shall also be sentenced to death. It is immaterial whether the killing is for rituals or not.

“As for governors who have refused to sign death warrants of convicts sentenced to death, it is an act lacking appreciation of the law they swore to protect.

“They are refusing to sign death warrants mostly for political reasons, because, they don’t want to lose peoples favour,” he declared.

Meanwhile, condemnations have continued to trail the gruesome murder of Yetunde Lawal, from prominent Nigerians including the Emir of Ilorin, Alhaji Sulu Ibrahim Gambari and socio-cultural groups including the Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union, IEDPU.