By Miracle Ogunde
A magistrate court in Edo State has sentenced Paul Okugbowa, the candidate of the Young Progressives Party, YPP, in the September 21, 2024 governorship election in Edo State, to six months imprisonment for calling one Mrs Blessing Aigbudu a prostitute.
Chief Magistrate Caroline Oghuma of the Oredo Magisterial District gave the ruling.
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 months 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.
According to the charge sheet, Okugbowa 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 a 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.
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 years 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.
In the charge sheet, the teachers were described as staff of the Academy and assigned as the caregivers for the children.
The charge sheet posited 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.
The convicts were first arraigned on June 2, 2024, before the court.
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