Edo Guber Candidate Bags Six-Month Jail For Calling Married Woman Prostitute
The candidate of the Young Progressives Party, YPP, in the September 21, 2024 governorship election in Edo State, Paul Okugbowa, 39, has been sentenced to six months imprisonment.
He was sentenced by Chief Magistrate Caroline Oghuma of the Oredo Magisterial District for calling one Mrs. Blessing Aigbudu a prostitute.
Okugbowa, the proprietor of Calvary Crown Academy, Benin City, was sentenced with an option of N100,000 fine alongside three teachers in the school.
The court sentenced two of the teachers to one-year imprisonment, while the other one was slammed with three three-month jail term.
The convicted teachers are Blessing Osarodion, 27, Egharevba Esosa, 29, and Isioma Nimen, 35.
While Blessing Osarodion and Egharevba Edosa were sentenced to one-year imprisonment with an option of N100,000 fine each on two counts, Isioma Nimen was sentenced to three months imprisonment with an option of N50,000 fine on one count.
The teachers were convicted for negligence and abandonment of two pupils in their care.
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Osarodion and Esosa were sentenced on each of the two counts bothering on negligence, leading to the injury of a six-year-old pupil, Salma Aigbudu.
The court, however, convicted Nimen for unlawfully abandoning another pupil, two-year-old Zuri Aigbudu.
The offences in which the convicts were arraigned contravened sections 167(2), 412, 270, 412 and 267 of the Criminal Laws of Edo 2022.
Okugbowa, according to the charge sheet, committed the offence on September 8, 2023, at the AIG Zone 5 headquarters in Benin, where he conducted himself in a manner likely to cause breach of peace.
He was said to have publicly called Mrs Blessing Aigbudu, the mother of the two pupils, a prostitute in the presence of her husband and bystanders and to the hearing of the public.
In the charge sheet, the teachers were described as staff of the Academy and assigned as the caregivers for the children.
The charge sheet noted that the teachers failed to carry out their duty on the six-year-old, Miss Salman Ewan Aigbudu, which led to an injury on her face on September 29, 2021, and causing her a serious harm.
Salma Aigbudu was said to have been wounded in the waiting room of the school during the closing hour without any first aid administered on her by the teachers on duty.
The convicted teachers were also charged for abandoning another pupil, Zuri Aigbudu, 2, in January 2022, thereby exposing the pupil to unnecessary danger.
Olamilekan Adigun is a graduate of Mass Communication with years of experience in journalism embedded in uncovering human interest stories. He also prioritises accuracy and factual reportage of issues.
