Actress Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, on Thursday, February 1, 2024, convicted and sentenced an actress, Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin to six months imprisonment for staying Naira and stepping on the new naira notes at a social event in the state of n January 28, 2023.
Actress Omoseyin was arrested and arraigned by the Lagos State Command of the anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on February 13, 2023, on two count-charge.
One of the charges entered against Actress Omoseyin was “That you, Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin, on the 28th day of January 2023, at Monarch Event Centre, Lekki, Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, whilst dancing during a social occasion, tampered with the sum of N100,000 (one hundred thousand nairas) issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria by spraying same in the said occasion and you thereby committed an offense contrary to and punishable under Section 21(1) of the Central Bank Act, 2007.”
Actress Omoseyin, therefore, pleaded "not guilty" before she was granted bail by the trial court on February 15, 2023.
Dramatically, Actress Omoseyin, on being re-arraigned on Thursday, February 1, 2024, changed his plead from "not guilty" to "guilty" after she was faced with overwhelming evidence in the possession of the plaintiff, EFCC.
Following her “guilty plea”, the prosecution counsel, Z.B. Atiku called Abubakar Mohammed Marafa, an operative of the EFCC, to review the facts of the matter.
Marafa recalled: “The defendant was arrested by officers of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, on February 1, 2023, and was handed over to the Commission on February 2, 2023, for further investigation.”
According to him, the defendant’s statement was taken under caution, where she stated that she attended a friend’s wedding on January 28, 2023, and that she sprayed N200 and N100 naira notes on the occasion.
“The defendant was processed, and the videos of where she sprayed the money were found on her phone. Also, further investigations were carried out and the management of the event center was invited. They also brought in the video footage of the said event,” he said.
The prosecution counsel, thereafter, further applied to tender, in evidence, the letter from the ICPC and other accompanying documents, including the extra-judicial statement of the defendant, a forensic report of her phone, a CD of videos showing her spraying the naira note, a flash drive from the event center, and the statement of the representative of the center.
Justice Aneke admitted them as exhibits and convicted the defendant, as charged.
The defense counsel, Afuye Adegbola, pleaded for leniency, saying, “She’s a first-time offender; she is a mother of one; she is remorseful and pleads for mercy.”
He further pleaded for a non-custodial sentence on behalf of the convict.
Delivering judgment, Justice Aneke sentenced the defendant to six months imprisonment, effective from Thursday, with an option of an N300,000 (three hundred thousand naira only) fine to be paid into the consolidated revenue account of the federation.
Omoseyin bagged her imprisonment when she was arrested by operatives of the ICPC along Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, after the video of her spraying and stepping on the newly redesigned Naira notes at a party surfaced online. In the viral video, she was also seen flaunting wads of the new naira notes.
In her statement to the commission, she claimed that she received the new naira notes from her fans at the party and that she did not know the person who gave her the money.
Items recovered from her at the point of arrest include a Range Rover
Category: World-News
Tag: Lagos Court Sends Actress to Jail for Spraying New Naira Notes at Wedding Party
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Published 2/2/2024 10:11:58 AM