From classroom to gallows: Ekiti lecturer sentenced to death for armed robbery

An Ondo State High Court in Akure has sentenced Shittu Isiaka, a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, to death by hanging for his involvement in a 2017 highway robbery involving a commercial driver.

The Akure Division of the Ondo State High Court on Friday, March 13, 2026, sentenced Shittu Isiaka, a lecturer at the College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti, to death by hanging for armed robbery. Presiding Justice Omolara Adejumo delivered the judgment after finding Isiaka guilty of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery. The prosecution counsel, John Joshua, informed the court that the crime occurred on July 5, 2017, along the Ibuji axis of the Akure-Ilesha expressway. Isiaka and several accomplices—who remain at large—were found to have robbed Olatunji Olowoyeye, a commercial driver, of his Nissan Cabstar vehicle, mobile phone, and cash at gunpoint.

During the trial, the victim, Olowoyeye, provided a chilling account of the incident, revealing that he had known the defendant prior to the robbery. He testified that Isiaka and two other men had hired him in Ilesa under the guise of transporting cocoa beans from Igbara-Oke for ₦20,000. Suspicion arose when the passengers instructed him to drive into the bush near a primary school at Ibuji. Olowoyeye told the court that one of the men sitting beside him suddenly brought out a gun while Isiaka sat in the front seat. The attackers subsequently dragged the driver from the vehicle, tied his hands and legs, and abandoned him in the bush.

While Justice Adejumo convicted Isiaka on the robbery charges, the court discharged and acquitted him on a third count of endangering the victim’s life. Olowoyeye had alleged that the defendant injected him with an unknown substance before tying him to a tree, but the judge ruled that the prosecution failed to provide medical evidence or a syringe to support this specific claim. Despite Isiaka’s denials throughout the trial, the judge held that sufficient evidence linked him to the robbery. “The sentence of the court upon you is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” Justice Adejumo declared, bringing an end to the nearly eight-year legal battle.

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