Justice Adenike Akinpelu of the Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin on Monday convicted three students for conspiring to gang rape a cousin of one of them.
The court found them guilty of two counts of criminal conspiracy and rape of the victim (name withheld) at the Adangba area in the Ilorin East Local Government Area of the state.
The convicts, Omotosho Yahaya (23), who is the cousin of the victim, Mustapha Ahmed (23) and 22-year-old Mustapha Ridwan, are all students of a tertiary institution in the state.
The first defendant (Yahaya) was said to have invited his two friends to join him in the act while with the victim was in the room.
They were sentenced to five years imprisonment each for rape and two years each for criminal conspiracy.
The sentences, which include an additional N50,000 fine imposed to be paid by each of the defendants, are to run concurrently.
Justice Akinpelu held that “The confessional statements of the defendants are clear, unambiguous and equivocal contrary to the argument of their counsel.
“No woman in her right senses will consent to and allow three men to have sex with her.”
She described the defendants’ claims that the victim owed them money as a ‘fairy tale’” and pronounced them ‘guilty as charged.’
Reacting to the judgment, the prosecutor, Muslimat Suleiman, a principal counsel from the Kwara State Ministry of Justice, said the judge did justice to the case having evaluated and exhausted the evidence before her.
On his part, the Director, Office of the Public Defender, Ishola Olofere, who defended the first and second defendants described the judgment as a “good one, though it was against us, looking at the industry exhibited by the judge.”
