Family Urges Abiodun to Reject Killer’s Pardon Bid

The family of Bamidele Adeyemi, murdered in Abeokuta six years ago, has formally petitioned Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun to reject a bid for state pardon by one of the men serving life imprisonment for his death.

In a petition dated September 25, 2026, and signed by Adeyemi’s sister, Oluwayemisi Adesanya, the family pleaded that the governor allow the court’s judgment to stand. Any grant of clemency, they argued, would reopen wounds that remain raw more than half a decade later and undermine the justice already delivered.

Adeyemi, a father of two, was killed in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown while serving on a local community security committee in the Onikolobo area of Abeokuta. Family members say he was attacked after refusing to reopen a restricted security gate. Ajayi Olayinka and his co-defendant, identified in court records as Oguntayo Ayobami (also referred to in some reports as Abayomi Oguntayo), allegedly set upon him with broken bottles and knives. He died from the injuries.

The two men were charged with murder before the Ogun State High Court in the Sagamu Judicial Division (Suit No. AB/1C/2021). On April 20, 2023, they entered a plea-bargain agreement. The prosecution substituted the murder charge with manslaughter; the defendants pleaded guilty. Justice P.F. Oduniyi convicted them on June 19, 2023, and sentenced both to life imprisonment.

The matter returned to public attention after Olayinka’s counsel applied for a state pardon in a letter dated February 21, 2025. The lawyer argued the killing was not premeditated and urged the governor to exercise his constitutional prerogative of mercy so the convict could be released and given a second chance. The application also claimed Adeyemi had provoked the attack—an assertion the family flatly rejects as false and insulting to the deceased’s memory.

For Adeyemi’s relatives, the consequences have been devastating and continuing. They say the shock of the killing contributed to serious health complications for his parents; his mother died in 2025 and his father in 2026. He left a widow, a daughter who was 10 at the time of his death and is now 16, and a son who was only eight months old when his father was killed.

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The family also dismissed the argument that Olayinka’s subsequent educational achievement—a degree obtained from the National Open University of Nigeria while in custody—should count in favour of clemency. Educational progress in prison, they insisted, cannot erase the permanent loss or restore the life that was taken prematurely.

They further contended that releasing a man convicted of such a violent act would send the wrong signal about street violence and community security enforcement in the state. As of the latest reports, neither the Ogun State Ministry of Justice nor the State Advisory Council on the Prerogative of Mercy had issued a public response to the pending application.

The petition underscores a recurring tension in Nigeria’s criminal justice system: the balance between rehabilitation, gubernatorial mercy, and the enduring demand for finality from victims’ families.