Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Essien Udim has sentenced two brothers to death for killing a farmer over a piece of land.
The convicted felons are 48-year-old Uduak Udo Umoren, a pastor and motorcyclist and 34-year-old Emmanuel Udo Umoren, a farmer and panel beater, both indigenes of Adiasim Ikot Ekon Village in Essien Udim Local Government Area.
They were condemned for the murder of one Iboro Akpan Joe, a 45-year-old farmer and a trader, who was beaten to death when he visited his sister-in-law in Adiasim Ikot Ekon to condole her on the death of her husband.
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According to Daily Post, the sister-in-law had asked the deceased to accompany her to her late husband’s farmland to assess how much she could sell it for his burial.
Then the wife of the second convict saw them on the land and called her husband informing him that someone was trying to bury ‘juju’ on their family land.
She told the court that arriving on the farmland, the second convict started beating the deceased, while his wife also invited her son and her brother-in-law who joined in the fray, cutting the deceased with a machete and broken bottles.
The plea of the sister-in-law and the deceased’s wife, who heard the cry for help and rushed to the scene, fell on deaf ears, as the deceased was beaten to a state of coma and dragged to his family compound close to the farm.
At the family compound, the two convicts continued to beat the deceased until the youths of Adiasim Ikot Ekon Village led by their President, rescued him and rushed him to the General Hospital, Ikot Ekpene, where he was rejected for treatment.
It was also gathered that the deceased was taken back to his village, where he died three days after the incident.
Delivering judgment on the matter on Wednesday, the presiding judge, Justice Winifred Effiong, found the two accused guilty of murder and sentenced them to death by hanging accordingly.
She said the “prosecution team from the State Ministry of Justice had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt, adding that the accused did intentionally kill the deceased.”
