How Witnesses Used Our Bar To Stage-manage Video Presented In Court Against MFM Pastor, Others Accused Of Planning To Rob Church –Hotel Manager
According to him, Olukoya wanted him dead because he refused to give false testimony against a pastor he identified as Femi Agboola.
AJuly 2016 ruling of a Lagos State High Court at Igbosere acquitted and discharged a former pastor of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, Oluwafemi Jimoh and two others charged with conspiracy to rob the church.
The other defendants in the case are Henry Aiyewero and Caleb Oloruntele.
SaharaReporters earlier reported an interview Jimoh granted to Yoruba Gidi TV in which he accused the church of sentencing him to prison for nine years without trial, over alleged armed robbery.
Jimoh said he was framed by the church, adding that his trial started when he met the chief security officer of MFM founder, Pastor Daniel Olukoya at a native doctor’s house.
He said he was beaten and handcuffed while a Divisional Police Officer shot him in the leg.
He said in the interview, “I met Gbadamosi who is the chief security officer to Pastor Olukoya at a native doctor’s house, what did he go there to do? He was surprised to see me, and I did not reveal it to any human being. I was arrested and kept in the cell, I was there for 30 days. I didn’t have a lawyer.
“They handcuffed my hands and legs and put me in the boot of a vehicle. As we were going, they branched at a filling station and brought me out, removed the handcuff from my hands and transferred me into a jeep (SUV) and was taken to Pastor Olukoya’s place.
“When we got to my general overseer’s place, I told him with respect and honour in accordance to MFM, that I had been in a cell for days, His response was so shocking to me. He said don’t you know that our prayers here are always answered?
“I pleaded with our father, Olukoya not to let them take me back to the station, because I didn’t know my offence. He said the case was already at the station, and that I should let the police carry out their work. He told them to take me away.”
Similarly, the 3rd defendant (Caleb Oloruntele) narrated in an interview with Yoruba Gidi TV how Olukoya allegedly ordered the police to shoot him.
According to him, Olukoya wanted him dead because he refused to give false testimony against a pastor he identified as Femi Agboola.
The former MFM usher said he was prosecuted in 2008 without any concrete evidence to prove the allegation against him.
He said, “I joined the church to solve my life issues. But I didn’t know the church would complicate my life. Those who did not understand what really happened would be saying different things. Assuming I had died inside the prison, people would think Olukoya’s allegation of murder against me was true.
“I fear the police. The police know the criminals but because of corruption they always hide the truth. We went to Olukoya to beg him. We prostrated before him. He pushed us away. And he told the police that they did not do well. He asked the police why they did not shoot us.”
Justice O. A. Wiliams in her ruling said, “I therefore find that the Inference that there is an agreement between the defendants to commit the crime of robbing MFM church cannot be made.
“The prosecution not having proved its case, there is no burden on the defendants to prove their defence. I find and hold that the prosecution has failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The defendants are therefore acquitted and discharged.”
Beyond that, one of the exhibits presented in court by the prosecution was a video recording of when the suspects met in a bar to allegedly conspire to rob MFM.
However, according to the testimony of the manager of the hotel in a court document obtained by SaharaReporters, the police stage-managed the setting.
He said he permitted a friend of one of the prosecution witnesses to use the hotel’s bar for a movie.
The hotel manager said he was shocked to later find out that some of the ‘actors’ had been put in jail.
The court document read, “Paul Effiong the manager of Jethro Hotel testified as DW5 (Defence Witness 5). He stated that PW1 (Prosecution Witness 1- Adebayo Fatai, who testified as a security guard at Savannah Bar in Onike) and PW3 (one Akeem Asalu) are his customers. He deposed that he was informed by one Orji, PW3’s friend that movie would be shot at the hotel’s bar and happily gave his consent.
“He narrated how about 11 people including PW1, PW3, Orji and the defendants came for the video shoot and how it was set. He was shocked to see the defendants on television and to hear that they were robbers about a month later.
“He stated that he was suspended at work for about a month for permitting the shoot and eventually sacked. When he met up with PW1, PW3 and Orji after he got a new job and brought up the issue of the movie, Orji told him there was no movie, that what it was an arranged work, a business deal.
“When he probed him further, PW1 gave him a phone number, which he called and he spoke to a lawyer who told him the three people involved were in prison.
“Under cross-examination, he stated that he worked in Jethro Hotel in Iwaya between July 2007 and 19/04/08 and that the video was shot in the bar of the hotel. He added that he was sacked because he did not inform the management or get approval before he allowed the film to be shot at the hotel.”
Also, Oriyomi Amoo who testified as DW2 identified himself as the son of an herbalist.
He stated that he knew Jimoh when he was a pastor at MFM Ogbomoso.
Amoo stated that his father was a native doctor and deposed that once when Jimoh came to see him over some work he was doing for the church, as he was leaving, “he saw one of his father’s customers who had been coming to his house for about two years also leaving”.
The testimony read, “DW1 (Jimoh) later told him he remembered that he knew the said customer at Pastor Olukoya’s church in Lagos.
“Under cross-examination, DW2 stated that he was not a member of the church. He described his father’s customer whom he said his father used to call Gbadamosi. He stated that he was residing in the same place as his father, in Ogbomoso not Oshogbo.”
The court identified the main elements of conspiracy as a specific intent, an agreement with another person to engage in a crime to be performed, and the commission of an overt act by one of the conspirators in furtherance of the conspiracy.
In reaching her conclusion, Justice Williams, therefore, held, “I find that the contradictory testimonies of the witnesses of the prosecution cannot establish the facts from which the court is being invited to make an inference that there was a conspiracy.
“No such inference can be made from the documentary evidence either. In the first place, the court cannot rely on the confessional statements of the defendants, which cannot stand alone because it is the law that there must be facts outside or external to the confession, proved which will be consistent with it and make it likely to be true; but there are no such facts established by the prosecution.
“Exhibit P8 is a vague letter pleading for mercy for a sinful act and is not actually specifically referable to the allegation of a plan to rob the church so I find that it carries no weight at all. Similarly, there is nothing on the face of Exhibit P4-the sketch that links the 1st defendant to it or established that he authored it. That document also carries no weight.”
