The two brothers from Niger State were killed by their host and their bodies buried behind Dabasabe compound. They had visited based on their familiarity with the herbalist when he lived in their family house in Bida some years back.
Though not the first time the brothers would be visiting, they had come to complain that the last consultation, which was a charm to make someone impervious to bullets and gunshots, had failed.
But they met their death after Dabasabe gave them poison, which he told the brothers would make the bulletproof charm effective. The concoction had an immediate effect on the brothers, who began to writhe in pain.
When death delayed in coming, the native doctor hastened it by using a pestle to smash their skull after which he buried them in his compound.
Confessing to the murder, Dabasabe said he was confused on what next to do after collecting huge sums of money for the native bulletproof protection. “So, I decided to poison the two and used pestle to break their heads when the poison did not kill them instantly.”
A High Court sitting in Koton-Karfi in Kogi on Monday sentenced a herbalist, Ibrahim Muhammed, to death by hanging for murdering two brothers.
In his judgement, the Presiding Judge, Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye, who sentenced the convict to death described his act as “high level of exceptional wickedness”.
Omolaye-Ajileye said the convict had corroborated the prosecution’s submission that he poisoned Mohammed Kudu Abubakar and Umar Tanko Abubakar after snatching their car.
“I hold that after poisoning the two brothers as the accused confessed in his downright criminality, he hit their heads with pestle (Exhibit P7) to hasten their annihilation.
And, in order to avoid any trace of his brutal and inhuman act, the accused buried the dead bodies of Tanko and Mohammed in his compound. Unfortunate for him, since nothing is hidden under the sky, nemesis caught up with him.
By the application of an unusual but most excellent investigatory dexterity, the Special Anti-Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police, Kogi State, exposed the apparently hidden crime.
By your own word, after poisoning both Tanko and Mohammed and they refused to die, you used a pestle to hit them on their heads. That was a brutal homicide committed with determination and ruthlessness.
The manner you committed it by your own description, make it a high-level exceptional wickedness that it can only be properly marked by death sentence, which is the only sentence I can pass on you,” Omolaye-Ajileye ruled.
Muhammed was charged with robbery and culpable homicide. The convict committed the offence sometime in January, 2016 at Kungbani. .
He was said to have robbed Abubakar and his brother, Mohammed, of a Toyota Carina E Wagon and later poisoned, killed and buried them.
