Why do you believe he is innocent when we were told during the trial that he not only instructed those who shot Kudirat Abiola, but also facilitated the weapon that was used in killing her?
Is that not what we were told? But they did not tell the public that this same witness who said that Mustapha gave him the gun to kill Kudi came back to court crying like a baby, sobbing and saying that he was induced to testify like that. Induced by whom, the court asked?
He said the state induced him. Who was the state? He mentioned three people including the Director General of the State Security Service, SSS, at that time. What were you induced with? He said he was told he would be given a house in Abuja, he would be given foreign posting, his salaries would be paid in foreign exchange and their wives would be given money every month for sustenance.
But when the state now failed to sustain its own part of the bargain, they too started singing. If the state failed to sustain its own part of the bargain, why should they? And they gave the full version of their involvement. First, some of them, as a result of complying with the wishes of the state, were set free.
They were walking the streets freely and even went back to their jobs. One of them was not even in Lagos in the month of June, 1997. He was not anywhere near Lagos.
On the 4th of June, the day Kudirat was murdered in Lagos, Kachako was getting married in Kazaure in Bauchi State. He got married at 10 o’clock while Kudirat was killed between 8am and 9am. He said in that month of June, he was not anywhere near Lagos.
And after getting married, he went for his honeymoon. The judge of the local court was told all that and she recorded everything said by those witnesses. She based her judgement of ‘death by hanging until death takes over’ on prosecution witness 2 and 3. But no one told Nigerians that all these happened in court.
No one told us that the evidence was retracted. And when the judge was going to give judgement in the lower court, she knew that such a crime might get death sentence. So she itemised the evidence and said, “But there are circumstantial evidences.”
Circumstantial evidences in a murder case? Okay, what are the circumstantial evidences? She did not say. And yet she wrote 386 pages of judgement.
What was she looking for writing 386 pages? According to the Appeal Court, she was fishing for untruth, falsehood and lies. And I think the Appeal Court wrote about 33 pages or so with various authorities cited.
At the end, the Appeal Court didn’t see what circumstances the lower court referred to, so they said that crime and punishment will not be an influence in their judgement. The Appeal Court based its judgement on hard facts, not circumstantial evidences.
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