Four men accused of complicity in last year’s murder of Miss
Cynthia Osokogwu were yesterday arraigned before the Lagos High Court in Ikeja.
Okwumo Nwabufo, Ezike Olisaeloka, Orji Osita and
Ezike Nonso were arraigned before Justice Olabisi Akinlade on a six-count
charge of conspiracy, murder, stealing and negligence .
Nwabufo and Olisaeloka allegedly tricked the lady they met on
facebook to Lagos from Nasarawa State and strangled her in a hotel room.
They pleaded not guilty when the charge was read to them. Their
trail commenced immediately, with the prosecution led by the state Attorney
General, Ade Ipaye, calling its first witness, Mrs Ifenyinwa Njegbu, a
receptionist at the hotel where the alleged murder took place.
Mrs Njegbu told the court how the first two
defendants-Nwabufo and Olisaeloka – who brought the lady to the hotel, escaped
after allegedly killing her. The witness said the duo escaped on the excuse
that they wanted to withdraw money from a nearby ATM.
Mrs Njegbu told the court that while on duty on saturday 21,
July 2012, she checked in two guests, a man and a woman, who claimed to
be a couple into room C1 of the hotel at about 12am.
She said at about 8am while she was preparing to hand over
to one of her colleagues, Vivian Amule, the first two defendants informed her
through the phone that they were checking out.
“After I had handed over to my colleague, I asked her to check
out the couple since they had told me that they were leaving that morning,” he
said.
Mrs Njegbu said when she resumed duty the next day, her
colleague told her that the couple had left, but that a brother of the man had
taken over the room because the room was not going to expire until 12pm of July
22, 2012.
She said she noticed that the brother of the man who had booked
the room was still occupying the room.
She said while sitting at the reception, a man in brown long
sleeve shirt went straight into the bar with a brown bag and he was drinking.
When asked to describe the person she saw, she described the
second defendant (Olisaeloka) as dark in complexion, tall, young. She also
identified him as the second person in the dock who had on a pink polo T-shirt.
She told the court that after sometime she saw a man who is fair
in complexion that wore a dark sun glasses coming down from the upstairs
towards her, where the second defendant (Olisaeloka) in the bar met with
the first defendant (Nwabufor) at the reception and they went out together
before she stopped him because it is the normal thing to do, especially when
the person did not officially lodge in the hotel.
The witness said they didn’t return until around 3pm, when
someone called the intercom phone of the hotel and identified himself as the
occupant of room C1, revealing that he is not going to return to the hotel,
saying “ you people should remove the idiot from the room.”
Mrs Nejgbu said she replied that sir “but you promised to come
back and pay for the room”, the only thing he did was to drop the phone.
“Immediately I called the manager and explained what had
happened. So he told me that if he didn’t come back the girl will pay for the
C1 room, so he told me to call the room through the company’s intercom phone
and I called but there was no response.
“The manager, Mr Victor, went upstairs and said he knocked at
the door and there was no response, so he told me to take the master key since
am a lady like her that I should go and open the door, so I went upstairs to
the room and knocked severally and there was no response, so I used the masters
key to open the door and I met the deceased Cynthia naked on the bed, with one
of her legs touching the ground in room C1 and I was shocked and shouted
Jesus.”
She added that she rushed down to inform the manager, who went
upstair to identify the corpse.
She added that the next thing was that she saw policemen
who called all of them on duty to identify those they saw through the CCtv in
the hotel.
She further said that she was able to identify the first and
second defendants and the police took them to “Area E” police station where
their statements were taken.
She said two weeks later, someone called the hotel and asked for
the details of Cynthia, the deceased, if she lodged in the hotel, identifying
himself as the deceased’s brother.
She said it was not in the practice in the hotel to disclose
details of their customers.
The state alleged that two of the defendants, Okwumo and Ezike,
on or about 22 July, 2012 at Cosmilla Hotel, Amuwo-Odofin, Festac Town,
conspired to murder Cynthia.
The state also alleged that the defendants murdered Cynthia by
administering Rohypnol Flunitrazepan tablet into her drink, chained her hands
and legs and strangled her to death.
The duo were also alleged to have stolen three blackberry phones
valued at N150,000, jewelries, an international passport and a driver’s licence
belonging to Cynthia after they strangled her to death.
Orji Osita, the third suspect, was charged for negligently of
selling the Rohypnol Flunitrazepan tablets to Ezike, the second defendant,
without a doctor’s prescription and without showing due care.
Ezike Nonso, the man who allegedly bought Cynthia’s stolen
blackberry Bold 5 was charged for being in possession of a stolen phone.
Lawyers to the third and fourth defendants, Orji Osita and
Ezike Nonso, the pharmacist and the man who bought Cynthia phone
respectively applied for their bail.
Ruling on the bail, Justice Akinlade ordered that third
defendant should continue with the N1million bail granted him at the lower
court.
The judge also granted the fourth defendant bail in the sum of
N2million with two sureties.
She ordered that one of the sureties must be a Grade Level
14 civil servant resident in Lagos with proof of three years’ tax payment.
Source: The Nation
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