25 August 2025 :
A Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin, the state capital, on July 31, 2025 sentenced Abdulrahman Bello to death by hanging for the murder of 24-year-old Hafsoh Yetunde Lawal, a final-year student of the Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin.
Delivering judgment on July 31 after four months of trial, Justice Hannah Ajayi found Bello guilty of killing the victim, who was reportedly his Facebook lover.
The prime suspects and the four other accomplices were in February slammed with four counts of criminal conspiracy, culpable homicide, possession of human parts and armed robbery.
The offences, according to the prosecution, were contrary to Sections 97, 221 of the Penal Code Law, Section 2 of the Kwara State (Prohibition Law) of Dealing in Human Parts Law 4 of 2018 and Section 1(2) of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provision) Act CAP R11 Law of the Federation of Nigeria 2004.
The court, however, discharged and acquitted four co-defendants: Ahmed Abdulwasiu (41), Suleiman Muyideen (28), Jamiu Uthman (29), and Abdulrahmon Jamiu (31), who were initially arraigned alongside Bello.
Bello had confessed at the beginning of the trial to killing Lawal for money rituals, claiming he needed human hands for the purpose.
He identified himself as an Islamic cleric and admitted to carrying out the act alone.
According to testimonies, the incident occurred on February 13, 2025.
Lawal had gone to attend a friend’s naming ceremony when Bello invited her to his residence around the Offa garage area of Ilorin.
During the trial, Bello gave conflicting accounts of the events, initially saying he choked her to death after multiple rounds of sex before dismembering her body.
At another point, he claimed she died of an asthma attack and that he dismembered the body out of fear.
PUNCH Metro had reported that Bello was first arraigned on February 18 at the Magistrate Court in Ilorin, Kwara State and was ordered by the court to be remanded at the Federal Correctional Facility, Oke Kura, Ilorin till March 6, 2025, when the hearing on the criminal case began.
