Court sentences hotel staff to death by hanging for murder of hotel director, manager in Lagos

ARINZE NWAFOR, Lagos

A High Court of Lagos State in Ikeja has sentenced a hotel staff, Jeffery Ehizojie, to death by hanging for murdering a hotel director, Olusola Olusoga, and manager, Tunji Omikunle by beating and strangling them to death on January 25, 2019, at Etsahol Hotel.

Justice Oyindamola Ogala held that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that Ehizojie is guilty of the two counts of murder contrary to Section 223 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.

Justice Ogala said the crux of the case of the prosecution is premised upon the confessional statement of the convict as well as circumstantial evidence.

Earlier on February 2, 2019, Ehizojie, “volunteered a cautionary statement” at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti after the Lagos state police arrested him at Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Ehizojie later denounced the confessional statement, saying the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) at SCID, Panti forced it on him.

The judge held that the court had carefully considered the convict’s retracted defence statement, (that was admitted as evidence) where Ehizojie stated that one of the hotel staff, Henry, had informed him that he observed that the owner of the hotel kept much money at home.

Ogala said: “The defendant, in his confessional statement, said that Olusoga treated her workers badly so they planned to tie her and collect her money.

“Confessional statement is the best evidence to ground conviction and as held in several cases, it can be relied upon solely where voluntary,” she continued.

She also noted that “it is curious that the said defendant who was privy to the state of affairs (in the hotel), now states to the court that he was shocked when the police informed him of the death of his boss and the manager when he was arrested at Port Harcourt.”

Ogala held that “there is no doubt that the defendant was present at the premises of the scene of the crime as confirmed by him in his evidence in chief and exhibits before the court.” 

“The Court has carefully considered the evidence of the defendant before the Honourable Court, particularly his account of how he left the premises on the 25th of January 2019, and his incredible story as to why he did not return to the Hotel after the incident nor report at the police station.”

She held that “the defendant had no clear explanation as to why he had to flee to Port Harcourt the next day up until his arrest.”

Ogala said she believed that the convict wrote the Confessional Statement (Exhibit PW2(a)-(c) and that his feeble attempt to retract was to exonerate himself from the commission of the deadly act.

“The Honourable Court finds that the circumstantial evidence against the defendant in this instance is unequivocal, positive, and irresistibly points to the guilt of the defendant on the two count charges he stands faced with,” Ogala ruled.

The judge found Ehizojie guilty of killing Sola Olusoga and Tunji Omikunle and sentenced him to death by hanging.

During trial, the state counsel called four witnesses, and tendered several documents, while the convict testified as a sole witness.

The convict, who hails from Edo state, pleaded not guilty to the counts’ information preferred against him when he was arraigned on December 7, 2020.

Ehizojie’s trial began on February 25, 2021, as the prosecution called four witnesses, including David Nkwor, a computer engineer who worked at Etsahol Hotel in 2010.

Nkwor testified to the court that it was the police who woke him up to the news of the crime at the hotel and after informing him of the situation, got him to pen a statement at SCID, Panti.

Nkwor also testified to identifying some hotel co-workers to the police at Panti, from a video pulled from the hotel’s Close Circuit Television (CCTV) camera.

Nkwor told the court that he was able to identify his then co-workers; Jeffery (Ehizojie), Henry, White, and a fourth other person in the video, beating the (hotel) manager, killing him, and leaving him inside a toilet in the hotel.

A second prosecution witness, ASP Chris Akpanomo told the court that while he served at SCID, Panti, in January 2019, he received a case file transferred from Ojodu Berger Police Station.

The file contained exhibits like a knife, chisel, and a carved wooden gun among others, as well as photographs of the deceased. 

Akpanomo told the court that he saw through the CCTV video how the defendant, and others still at large, entered Olusoga’s room with a key they obtained from the hotel manager they murdered and strangled her to death.

Akpanomo further told the court that the police were able to apprehend Ehizojie through information provided by his elder brother, Daniel, who stood as a guarantor when the defendant was employed.

The third witness, ASP. Malik Aliyu, who served at Ojodu Police Station in January 2019, told the court that the murder case was reported to the police by a (now deceased) vigilante man, Friday Ojiemhonhin.

The prosecution’s fourth witness, Harrison Bruce; a Bolt driver formerly a bouncer at the hotel, testified to the court that he identified Jeffery, Light, David, and a fourth person he did not know from the hotel’s CCTV video.

Bruce told the court that the late vigilante related to him how he (Ojiemhonhin) stopped Ehizojie on his way out of the hotel with some luggage on the night of the crime and asked him to go call his manager.

However, according to Bruce, the defendant tricked the vigilante into thinking he (Ehizojie) was simply helping to bring out a hotel guest’s belongings.

The defence opened its case on November 7, 2022, and called the defendant as its sole witness.

Ehizojie told the court that he worked as a barman before being promoted to supervisor at the hotel.

The defendant told the court that before he was employed at the hotel, he met some of the staff who complained that the “managing director did not want to pay them (their) two-month salary.”

Ehizojie testified that when he spoke with Olusoga, the hotel director, of the complaints, she asked him to tell them not to worry as she would pay them, and that “they could not do anything to her.”

The defendant told the court that he refrained from showing up at the hotel on the day the murder became public after he got a call from a co-worker; Blessing, warning him not to come into work as police officers were arresting other staff members.

According to the defendant, his co-worker did not reveal the reason for the police arrests at the hotel the morning after the murder became public.

Ehizojie told the court he heard of the murder and took off to Port Harcourt after he called a police officer, who is also a customer at the (hotel) club, to check on the hotel’s manager, Omikunle, from whom he had earlier sought permission to travel.

The defence counsel argued that his client was accused of strangling the hotel manager to death, contradicting the testimony of the prosecution’s fourth witness, Bruce, who told the court that Omikunle’s throat was slit.

According to the defence counsel, Bruce’s testimony also contradicted the testimonies of the other three prosecution witnesses.

The defence counsel told the court that the prosecution’s case was riddled with inconsistencies and that it “hinged its case on mere suspicion, as the evidence they heavily claimed to rely upon, which is the CCTV, was never tendered in evidence before this court.”

The prosecution responded to the defence’s argument, stating that “the evidence about the CCTV camera was not controverted at any point.”