Uyo State High Court, Akwa Ibom State, has sentenced Uduak Akpan to death for raping and murdering a female job seeker, Iniubong Umoren, in the state last year.
The judge, Bassey Nkanang, in his sentence on Thursday, said that the condemned man will be executed by hanging.
Mr. Nkanang also found Mr. Akpan guilty of rape and sentenced him to life in prison.
The judge said that the indictment has proven without a doubt the case of rape and murder against Akpan.
However, he released and acquitted Mr. Akpan’s father and sister, who were the second and third defendants in the case.
After the judge read the sentence, the convicted rapist attempted to escape from the courtroom, but was overpowered by security officers.
Nkanang took more than two hours to finish reading the sentence.
Background
Ms. Umoren disappeared on April 29, 2021 after Uduak Akpan took her out of her home in Uyo with a fake job interview.
The victim’s friend, Uduak Umoh, said she heard her screaming for help when she contacted her by phone.
“She sent me a 1 second audio recording on WhatsApp and I had to call her back to see if she wanted to tell me anything but I immediately called her, heard her scream,” Ms. Umoh tweeted during the search for the murdered woman. .
Several Nigerians used the Twitter hashtag #FingHinyUmoren to see how they could trace the location of the missing woman or discover the identity and location of the person she met.
Police later exhumed Ms. Umoren in a shallow grave on April 30, 2021, one day after she was raped and murdered at Mr. Akpan’s family compound.
Her gruesome murder sparked international and national outrage over the rise in rape cases in Nigeria.
Ms. Umoren, before her death, was a recent Philosophy graduate from Uyo University. She was awaiting her deployment for the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) mandatory program.
Ms. Umoren did not live to see her mobilization letter for the program or even her final year result: she graduated as one of the valedictorians in her department.
trial, testimony
The convict, Mr. Akpan, first appeared in court on July 26, 2021 and pleaded guilty to murder and not guilty to rape.
However, the court found that she was not guilty of Ms. Umoren’s murder.
Akwa Ibom State Attorney General Uko Udom, who led the prosecution team, told reporters: “For a capital offence, an accused person who pleads guilty is neither here nor there. As far as the law is concerned, he is not guilty until we (the prosecution) prove our case.”
“So if an accused person pleads guilty to a capital offense like this, the court would normally find themselves not guilty,” Mr. Sam said.
Mr. Akpan later made a U-turn during his trial and denied raping and murdering Ms. Umoren.
He told the court that he had a “fever” the day he pleaded guilty and that it was the influence of his “IPO in court” that made him plead guilty.
He also denied the confessional statements he made to the police and added that a similar statement he made to the State Security Services (SSS) was made under duress.
But Ama Okeke, a call data analyst for SSS, who testified in court, produced a video recording of Akpan’s interview session that contradicted her claims. The court admitted the video as evidence.
Mr. Okeke also told the court that according to the agency’s call log analysis, Mr. Akpan and Ms. Umoren were in the same cell log and coordinated (location) at Nung Ikono Obio in the area. of the local government of Uruan.
He further told the court that investigations by the SSS led to the arrest of Mr. Akpan’s sister, who is the third person charged, Bassey-awan, in Calabar, Cross River state.
In addition to his confessional statements to the police and SSS, Mr. Akpan, while parading at the Uyo police headquarters, told reporters how he lured and killed the victim.
In his testimony in court to justify his son’s innocence, Frank Akpan, the father of the convicted man, told the court that his son had a mental disorder and was an outpatient at Uyo University Teaching Hospital.
Bassey-awan, in her testimonies, admitted that her brother visited her, but said that at the time of the visit, her brother was accused of kidnapping Ms. Umoren, based on what she had learned on Facebook.
She told the court that she had asked the brother to return to Uyo and clear his name.
Defense attorney’s final presentation
Sampson Adulla, an attorney with Legal Aid Counsel, provided free legal services to Mr. Akpan.
Mr. Adulla, while adopting his last written speech, pleaded with the court to rely on “weak facts” presented by the prosecution to release and acquit his client.
He asked the court to dismiss Mr. Akpan’s confession statement because “there were no witnesses to testify that his client committed the murder”.
As for Mr. Frank and Ms. Bassey-awan, Mr. Adulla had urged the court to release and acquit them because there was no evidence in court that the duo knew that Mr. Akpan was being charged with murder.
He had argued that at the time Mr. Akpan visited his sister in Calabar, his alleged crime was kidnapping and not murder.
presentation of the indictment
Counsel for the prosecution, Friday Itim, Deputy Director of Public Prosecution at the Ministry of Justice, Akwa Ibom State, reminded the judge how Mr. Akpan pleaded guilty to the charge of murder, but not rape, in his first court appearance last July. year.
Mr. Itim also drew the court’s attention to the fact that they (the prosecution) had shown that there was communication between Mr. Frank and his daughter (Bassey-awan) via text messages on the day of the incident.
The court had admitted the phone and the text message as evidence.