SAMUEL OJEGELE V. THE STATE

C. A. OPUTA, J.S.C. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): The facts of this case are miserable, sordid and morbid but they reflect the moral decay of the age in which we live; the age of unbridled acquisitiveness; of get rich quick at all costs and by any means; even at the expense of human suffering and human life. Samuel Idowu Ojegele, the 1st Appellant and Agboola Amos alias Baba Wale, the 2nd Appellant, caught the spirit of the age and conceived an idea to get rich quick. The 5th accused in the trial Court - Amusa Ishola Yesuff - was at hand to help him. Amusa Yesuff then introduced the 1st Appellant and the 2nd Appellant to a medicine man, Iwaloye Elero, the 3rd Appellant who was reputed to possess the power to prepare a concoction capable of making people rich. Reminiscent of the witches' concoction in Shakespeare's Macbeth, or Robert Burns' Tam O'Shanter, the 3rd Appellant prescribed the following ingredients:-

(i) The hunch of a hunch-backed man

(ii) Irun ajija

(iii) mercury and …