Ishola Oyenusi
Ishola Oyenusi popularly known as Dr. Ishola was a notorious Nigerian armed robber who committed series of robbery and other crimes in the late 60's and early 70's.[1][2]
Early life
On this date in 1971, the Nigerian robber Ishola Oyenusi — “smil[ing] to his death,” in the words of the next day’s paper — was publicly shot with his gang at Lagos Bar Beach. Dubbed “the most dangerous criminal of this decade” even though the Seventies were barely underway, “Doctor” Oyenusi — as he liked to style himself — sprang out of the wreckage of the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War, a charismatic, cocksure gangster whose lordly disdain for the law cast the terrifying portent of social breakdown. Beyond Oyenusi loomed a systematic collapse of order that long outlived him. In years to come, other celebrity crime lords would follow; eventually, armed robbery proliferated into a frightfully ubiquitous feature of life in Lagos. Maybe the Doctor smiled at the stake because he foresaw his legacy. Disturbingly unable to combat the plague systematically, authorities would resort to occasional high-profile executions instead, provided, of course, that the culprit’s misappropriations were of the retail street-crime variety, rather than the fruits of wholesale corruption. Oyenusi was never in the same universe with such exalted impunity as enjoyed by the masters of the state. He got into the robbery business back in 1959, boosting a car (and murdering its owner into the bargain) to make it rain for his broke girlfriend. While he eventually expanded his operations into a brutal syndicate, he was still just a hoodlum; the infamy that packed the Bar Beach with 30,000 fellow humans who booed and jeered Oyenusi to the stake was merely enough to make him worth the quashing. (He was condemned to death specifically for a raid on the WAHUM factory in March 1971 that also claimed the life of a police constable.) Six members of Oyenusi’s crime ring went with him to the stake on the same occasion. An eighth man was also shot in the batch for an unrelated armed carjacking.
Exploits
There is a 1977 film by Nigerian director Eddie Ugbomah based on this flamboyant gangster’s life, The Rise and Fall of Dr. Oyenusi. Also on this date 1292: Johann de Wettre, medieval Europe's first documented sodomy execution 1686: Jonathan Simpson, merchant turned highwayman 1812: Not Pierre Bezukhov, in War and Peace 1999: Double execution in Arkansas 1790: Johan Henrik Hästesko, Anjalaman 1820: John Baird and Andrew Hardie, for the Radical War 1642: Thomas Granger and the beasts he lay with Possibly Related Executions: 1939: Eugen Weidmann, the last public beheading in France 1739: Dick Turpin, outlaw legend 1803: Johannes Bückler, “Schinderhannes” 1869: Chauncey W. Millard, candy man 1909: Les Chauffeurs de la Drome Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,History,Mass Executions,Mature Content,Murder,Nigeria,Pelf,Public Executions,Shot,Theft
Arrest
http://www.executedtoday.com/2014/09/08/1971-ishola-oyenusi-smiling-to-his-death/
Trial and execution
Oyenusi together with six other members of his gang were executed on 8 September 1971 by a combine police and armed forces firing brigade.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ "HISTORY OF MAJOR ARMED ROBBERS AND THEIR DEMISE IN NIGERIA | Plateau Reporters". plateaureporters.com. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
- ↑ "Lawrence Anini, the notorious armed robber of the 80s". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
- ↑ "1971: Ishola Oyenusi, smiling to his death". ExecutedToday.com. Retrieved 2015-07-09.