Skip to main content

Appeal Court affirms Nollywood actress, Ibinabo Fiberesima’s 5-year jail term

Ibinabo-Fiberesima

The Court of Appeal in Lagos on Friday, dismissed an appeal by Nollywood actress Ibinabo Fiberesima challenging a jail term slammed on her by a Lagos High Court.
Ms. Ibinabo was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Justice Deborah Oluwayemi of a Lagos High Court for reckless driving which led to the death of a hospital staff.
She was alleged to have driven her car recklessly on the Lekki-Epe Expressway and knocked down a man, Giwa Suraj.
The deceased was said to be a staff of a Lagos state’s hospital.
A Magistrate court (court of first instance) had earlier given the appellant an option of N100,000 fine for the offence.
The magistrate was, however, set aside by the high court which replaced the option of fine with a jail term.
Dissatisfied, Ms. Fiberesima filed an appeal through her lawyer, Nnaemeka Amaechina, urging the court to set aside the five-year sentence.
Delivering judgment on Friday, the appellate court dismissed Ms. Fiberisima’s appeal and affirmed the decision of the Lagos High Court. 
In a unanimous decision delivered by Justice Jamilu Yammama Tukur, the court held that the trial Magistrate Court lacked the discretion to have granted Ms. Ibinabo an option of fine having been convicted. 
The court further held that the appeal lacked merit and consequently dismissed it.
Other members of the panel are Justice U.I. Ndukwe-Anyanwu (presiding) and Justice Tijani Abubakar.
The appellate court had earlier ordered the appellant to appear before it when judgement was to be delivered. 
Counsel to the appellant, Mr. Amaechina, said the judgment would be challenged at the Supreme Court, adding that a notice of appeal had already been filed.
Justice Oluwayemi of the trial court held that the magistrate exercised “judicial recklessness” when he gave the convict an option of fine.
The court noted that the trial magistrate must have misdirected himself based on the allocutus made by the counsel to the convict that she is a working mother.
Justice Oluwayemi had held that Sections 28 of the Traffic Law under which the accused was convicted did not give an option of fine.
She held that “when a term of imprisonment is mandatory for an offence, the court cannot and should not give an option of fine.”
She insisted that the fine did not serve the purpose of justice in the case and subsequently ordered that the N100, 000 be returned to the appellant.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A New Trend In The Crypto World - The ENCOCOIN

GeneX Globalbits ltd has launched the encocoin!! 1EncoCoin is valued @$1(#358) now.  Encocoin is convertible to bitcoin, Ethereum, bitcoin Cash, litecoin,  ,dash,Nigerian Naira, US dollars and other world currencies. Been a peer-to-peer electronic monetary system based on block chain technology, encocoin is the advanced solution for local money transactions with a global market usage. A lot seems to be going on with this coin and creating a lot of waves on the internet. Encocoin trends on different places on the net. The coin is said to offers entrepreneurs access to the most convenient method of payment when it comes to making payments regarding business expenses including wages, payments for suppliers, for goods and services all over the world, within seconds, with an extremely low/customizable transaction fee. Transactions with encocoin are free from all bureaucratic bottlenecks and cumbersome traditional banking procedures. Entrepreneurs can as well use EncoCoin (NKN)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dangote Plans To Generate 12,000MW Of Electricity

The President, Dangote Industries, Aliko Dangote, has said his company should be able to generate about 12,000 megawatts of electricity for the country by 2018. He also said that his business estate would start selling foreign exchange to the Central Bank of Nigeria by 2020. Dangote, who spoke in Lagos on Monday 7th, at the Nigerian Economic Summit organised by Economist Events, an arm of The Economist of London, said, “We are looking at a situation that by 2020, we will be the one selling FX to the CBN. Our projects are mainly import substitution. We are working to be self-sufficient to grow about a million tonnes of rice over the next five years. “Our gas project would have our gas pipelines on the seabed. The output should be able to provide about 12,000MW of power. We see a lot of transformation when we are done with most of our projects by 2018. “We have 15 countries in the ECOWAS community that are duty-free. The export market is big and profitable if you have the ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Silent Cry....

The word "abuse"..i am sure rings a bell. It has become common place in our society.Talk about different kind of abuse rampant in our midst like drug abuse, child abuse, violence against women, human right abuse, emotional abuse, etc... What exactly is the effect of abuse?
Post a Comment
Read more