An Iyaganku Chief Magistrate Court sitting in Ibadan has sentenced a 36-year-old man, Saheed Olapade, to two years imprisonment on Wednesday.
He was sentenced for unlawful possession of a human head.
Olapade, arraigned with Saheed Olawale, 32, faced a two-count charge of conspiracy and unlawful possession.
Senior magistrate, Patricia Adetuyibi, found Olapade guilty after he had pleaded guilty to the charges of unlawful possession of a female human head.
In her ruling, Mrs Adetuyibi sentenced him to 24 months imprisonment in Abolongo correctional facility, Oyo town, after the reading of the fact of the matter.
“This will serve as a deterrent to others like the convict who will not allow the dead to sleep,” the magistrate said.
She, however, discharged and acquitted the second defendant, Olawale, a commercial motorcyclist, who pleaded not guilty to the offence of conspiracy.
Olawale told the court that he did not know anything about the matter, adding that the convict only flagged him down and asked him to take him to somewhere in Ibadan.
He said that it was on the way that the police stopped them for a ‘stop-and-search’ and caught Mr Olapade with a human head.
The prosecutor, Folake Ewe, told the court that Olapade had, on November 18, 2021 at about 2:00 a.m. at the Foko area of Ibadan, unlawfully had in his possession one human head.
“The defendant conspired with one other, now at large, to exhume the dead body of a woman, who was interred in the afternoon and cut off her head by 2:00 a.m. of the same day,” she said.
She said that Olapade was running away to an unknown destination with the head on a commercial motorcycle, but was caught by the police.
The prosecutor further stated that when arrested, the defendant could not give a satisfactory account of how he came about the human head to the police.
According to her, the offence contravenes Sections 329(a) and 516 of the Criminal Code, Cap. 38, Vol. II, Laws of Oyo State, 2000.
