Five policemen were, on Thursday, sentenced to 25 years imprisonment each by Justice Joseph Olubunmi Oyewole of a Lagos State High Court, in Ikeja, for robbing a lorry loaded with textile materials.
The conviction of the five, Bestman Denner, Musa Mohammed, Peter Enidiok, Godwin Williams and Emmanuel Ajogbor, on charges of conspiracy and robbery, came 10 years after the incident.
Justice Oyewole said: “I hold that there is sufficient evidence to conspiracy as to commit robbery as charged. I hereby convict each of them accordingly.â€
The judge also ordered that the sentence should run concurrently, beginning from March 3, 2005, when they were first remanded in prison custody.
According to the judge, the fact that the defendants were policemen was even more “aggravating factor.â€
“I have duly considered the allocutus. However, the defendants are policemen trained to protect the public and not otherwise. This, in itself, is an aggravating factor. The defendants took advantage of their being members of the Nigeria Police Force to rob citizens.
“Using the police uniforms to rob is a bad signal to the public, because it will erode people’s confidence in the police. The image of the police should not be dented to the extent that members of the public will begin to see police checkpoints as an armed robbers’ locations,†Justice Oyewole said.
The policemen were charged to court for robbing the lorry, which was loaded with lace materials around 9.00 p.m. on November 17, 2002, on the Ikorodu-Ijebu-Ode Expressway, when the lorry was en-route to Benin with the goods.