By Onozure Dania

Lagos—An Assistant Superintendent of Police, Olusegun Bamidele, yesterday, told a Lagos High Court sitting in Igbosere that a female lawyer, Udeme Otike-Odibi, allegedly confessed to killing her lawyer husband, Symphorosa Otike-Odibi, and cutting his penis.

Judicial symbol for justice

Alleged murder: 6 stab wounds on Udeme were self-inflicted— Witness

Bamidele, a prosecution witness, who is in the homicide section of the State Criminal Investigation Department, SCID, Panti, Yaba, Lagos, gave evidence as the ninth witness in Udeme’s murder trial.

Justice Akintoye adjourned till February 25 to consider the admissibility of the statements in a trial within a trial.

Udeme was arraigned on June 13, 2018, on a two-count charge of murder and misconduct with regard to a corpse, by Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Titilayo Shitta-Bey.

The government accused the defendant of stabbing Symphorosa, also a lawyer, to death and mutilated his corpse by cutting off his genitals, on May 3, at their Diamond Estate, Sangotedo, Lekki, Lagos home.

Shitta-Bey said the offences contravened sections 165 (b) and 223 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

Udeme pleaded “not guilty,” following which she was remanded in Kirikiri Prison custody.

At the resumed hearing of her trial yesterday, Shitta-Bey called Bamidele as the state’s final witness.

Bamidele told the court that he was the head of the team that investigated the killing and that he personally recorded the defendant’s statement.

He said it was during an interactive session that Udeme wrote a detailed confessional statement.

Bamidele said: “While she (Udeme) was writing her statement,  I put questions to her, she would explain to me and put it down in writing.

“She stated in her statement that she was married to the late Symphorosa and that they were having marital issues.

“She stated that the deceased was having extra-marital affairs and whenever she raised the issue with him, his responses were not satisfactory and he appeared nonchalant.

“She said also in the statement that on May 2, 2018, she was preparing to travel to the United Kingdom. She checked the bedside locker for her marriage certificate. When she could not find it, she went to the deceased where he laid on the bed and asked him about it, but there was no response.”

The deed

Bamidele continued: “She had a discussion with him and there was a hot exchange of words, which made her to go to the kitchen and get a frying pan and knife.

“When she returned to where the deceased laid, she hit him on the head with the frying pan and said ‘tell me, what is in your mind that you are withholding’.

“She stated that the deceased called his mother to report her, while she continued to hit him on the head again and again. Finally, she used the knife to stab him in his abdomen.

“She also said while the deceased was lying on his back, she sat beside him, looking at his intestines coming out of the deceased and said ‘if this your penis is what is giving you license not to have the feeling of another person, it is better we cut it off,’ and she proceeded to do so with the same knife she used in stabbing him and put a piece of the penis in his right hand.”

Bamidele further explained that later that night, Udeme sent her close friend, Maureen Offor, a WhatsApp message which read: “I have done something terrible.”

The witness said further investigation showed that she sent two other WhatsApp messages, first to the husband of the deceased’s younger sister, Charles Akokuma, which read: “Just pray for us. May God forgive.”

The last one was to her mother in Calabar same night: “Sorry mum, we engaged in a fight.”