Female lawyer Udeme Otike-Odibi, has confessed to the killing of her husband Symphorosa Otike-Odibi last year.
A
prosecution witness on Wednesday gave graphic detail of the gruesome
killing, before an Igbosere High Court, Lagos, News Agency of Nigeria
reports.
The witness, Olusegun Bamidele, an assistant
superintendent of police in the Homicide Section, State Criminal
Investigation Department (CID), Panti, told the court that Udeme, in her
statement, confessed to killing her husband and cutting his manhood.
Udeme
was arraigned on June 13, 2018 on a two-count charge of murder and
misconduct with regard to a corpse by Lagos State Director of Public
Prosecutions (DPP), Titilayo Shitta-Bey.
According to the
prosecutor, Udeme stabbed Symphorosa, also a lawyer, to death and
mutilated his corpse by cutting off his genitals on May 3, 2018, at
their Diamond Estate, Sangotedo, Lekki, Lagos home.
The prosecutor said the offences contravened Sections 165 (b) and 223 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.
Udeme pleaded not guilty and was remanded in prison custody.
At the resumed hearing on Wednesday, the prosecutor called Bamidele, a police veteran, as the state’s final witness.
Bamidele
told the court that as the head of a team that investigated the
killing, he personally recorded the defendant’s statement.
He
said that Udeme wrote a detailed confessional statement during an
interactive session with her in protective custody in the police
hospital.
According to him, the defendant was recuperating from
what doctors described as “superficial and self-inflicted wounds,” when
she made her statement.
He said the defendant spoke freely after identifying herself as a lawyer.
Bamidele said:
“While
she (Udeme) was writing her statement, it was an interactive session. I
put questions to her, she would explain it to me and put it down in
writing.
“She stated in her statement that she was married to the late Symphorosa and that they were having marital issues.
“She
stated that the deceased was having extra-marital affairs and whenever
she raised the issue with him, his responses were not satisfactory, he
appeared nonchalant.
“She said that on May 2, 2018, she was
preparing to travel to United Kingdom when she checked the bedside
locker for her marriage certificate. When she could not find it, she
went to the deceased where he lay on the bed and asked him about it but
there was no response, the response given was not okay.
“She had a
discussion with him and there was hot exchange of words, which made her
to go to the kitchen and get a frying pan and knife.
“When she
returned to where the deceased lay, she hit him on the head with the
frying pan and said ‘Tell me, what is in your mind that you are
withholding.
“She stated that the deceased called his mother to
report her conduct. She continued to hit the deceased on the head again
and again. Finally, she confirmed that she used the knife to stab the
deceased in his abdomen.
“She also said while the deceased was
lying on his back, she was still angry. She sat beside him, looking at
his intestines coming out of the deceased and said: ‘If this your
joystick is the one that is giving you license to have the feeling of
another person, it’s better we cut it off,’ she proceeded to do so with
the same knife she used in stabbing him and hanged a piece of the
joystick in his right hand”.
Bamidele explained that later that
night, Udeme sent her “close friend” Maureen Offor, a WhatsApp message
which read: “I have done something terrible.”
NAN further reports
that the witness said further investigation showed that she sent two
other WhatsApp messages, firstly to the husband of the deceased’s
younger sister, Charles Akpoguma, which read: “Just pray for us. May God
forgive.”
He said the last message was to her mother in Calabar the same night. It read:
“Sorry mum, we engaged in a fight.”
However,
things took a more graphic turn when the prosecution played pictures of
the defendant on a hospital bed after the incident and her bloodied
deceased husband on his deathbed.
Shitta-Bey also tendered, through Bamidele, several exhibits recovered from the defendant.
They
included a big, shiny frying pan allegedly used by the defendant on the
deceased, a blood covered kitchen knife Udeme allegedly used in killing
Symphorosa, a blood stained pen, four phones, two of which were blood
stained, Udeme’s Nigerian and British passports.
But when the
prosecutor sought to tender the two statements which Udeme allegedly
made to the police, her counsel, Mr Olusegun Banjoko, opposed the
admissibility of the statements.
Banjoko prayed the court not to
admit the statements as evidence, adding that they were not made in the
presence of the defendant’s lawyer as required by law.
Justice Adedayo Akintoye adjourned until February 25 to consider the admissibility of the statements in a trial within trial
Leave a Reply