REV. KING: THE INNOCENCE, THE FRAME UP

The case for which Rev. King was sentenced to death was a sheer frame up. If the trials were not an extraterrestrial, tell me how the contradicting accounts of the incident by prosecution witnesses would have passed undisturbed through both the Appeal and Supreme Courts. The deceased; Ann Uzuh was NOT a maid to Rev. King as was widely reported. First, Ann and her father-until the fire incident that took her life, were members of Rev. King's church who had no words to thank Rev. King for what he was doing in their lives and their family. Ann Uzuh was one of the thousands who were studying under Rev. Kings scholarship. An announcement was made by the church at a certain time publicizing a job opportunity for men and women who are interested in working at the church quarters where King lived. Scores of members of the church applied including Ann and luckily, she succeeded as one of those who were employed. These employees of the church lived at a section quite different from where Rev. King lived. They lived at the boys quarters while king lived ALONE at the main building.

On that fateful Saturday evening, 25th Day of July, 2006, King returned home from work and there was no light in the neighborhood due to power outage from the then NEPA. He immediately alighted from his car and moved up the stairs waiting for the workers to put on the generating set so he can move into his room. He had barely undressed before there came a loud cry and shout down stairs and he quickly rushed down the stairs again to find out what was going on only to see Ann covered in flames. At this time, her co-workers were all standing a distance away from her just watching without doing anything to help her. Rev. King himself rushed towards Ann, dared the fire on her, stretched his hand and caught Ann by her clothes, dragged her down on a tap right on the wall beside him and turned on the tap which helped put of the fire. At this time, Ann had already stopped breathing.

King instantly revived her, poured oil on her burnt before asking Ann's co-workers what happened to her. Surprisingly, no one uttered a word. Rev. King drove out his car, carried Ann by himself into his car, and drove her to Faith City Hospital in Ajao Estate, Lagos, asked the hospital to take care of her and also got a member of the church to take care of her while she takes treatment. Rev. King that night, also instructed that a formal report be made to the Police before he left for home. When he got home, surprisingly also, there was no one to open the gates for him, he opened the gates himself and drove into the house only to discover that the workers had all packed their belongings and left the church quarters.

The next time he saw some of them were on TV where they were telling the world that Rev. King poured petrol on them and set them on fire.

While Ann Uzuh was in the hospital, she made statements to the police both on paper and on tape. By this time, Rev. king had been arrested. In her statement, Ann stated how she was burnt by a fire explosion from the gen. set, how she mistakenly tried to top some petrol in the gen. set while it was already steaming and that caused an explosion. She stated categorically that Rev. King was nowhere close to the scene before the explosion. The Faith City Hospital in her statement also confirmed that it was Rev. King who brought Ann Uzuh to the hospital.

I was most surprise that the Police, during Rev. King's trial at the high Court, managed to move Ann's statements from the case file. It took Rev. King's team of lawyers' foresightedness to exhume the written statement by Ann while till date, there was no trace of the statement made by Ann on tape. It was a show of shame by the Police at the Ikeja High Court on that fateful day, when against the expectation of the police and prosecutors, the written statements made by Ann to the Police on two different occasions surfaced in the court. The Police had no option but confirm to the court, after they were allowed to peruse the documents, that those were truly Ann's statements and in both occasions, Ann's statements exonerated Rev. King of any complicity.

Almost all the lawyers who followed the case were aback by the verdict of Justice Olubunmi Oyewole whom till date, have not been able to give a credible insight as to what formed his decision to give judgement against King. Aside that, all the grounds upon which Rev. King's appeals were predicated were credible enough for any Appellate Judge of sound mind to over-turn that conviction.

First, the deceased's statement, which should have shaped the opinion of the High Court Judge; Oyewole, was not admitted for no explainable reason. This alone caused a severe miscarriage of justice and I can assure you this is what happened here. A particular plastic container were brought to court, alleging that it was used by King to pour petrol on the prosecution witnesses. During cross examination, Rev. King maintained that he had never seen that container for the first time. The most reasonable thing to do would have been to run a biometric analysis on the container in order to ascertain whether or not King had touched that container before. That was also waved aside in a case of murder where the life of the accused person was at stake.

Submitting here, I still maintain that King is a great, Holy Man of God and does not in any way deserve this. However, the supreme court have given it's verdict but as a Christian, I have read about Jesus Christ of Nazareth our Lord, also about Daniel in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament of the Bible. I also know the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal etc. In all these, we saw that God manifested with his power when the agents of Satan thought they have defeated God and his anointed. I therefore know for sure that God Almighty will NEVER abandon Rev. King

By Chibuike Iherue