Double Murder: Lagos Court Shifts Dane, Peter Nielsen’s Judgement to May 20

A Lagos High Court sitting at the Tafawa Balewa Square Annex, has shifted judgement in the double murder trial of a Danish citizen, Peter Nielsen, accused of killing his Nigerian wife, Zainab, and daughter, Petra, to May 20, 2022. The four-year old case is before Justice Bolanle Okikiolu-Ighile of the Lagos High Court. 

Judgment was initially fixed for Friday, May 6, but on getting to the court, Journalists gathered that the decision was not ready and a new date had been given.

At the last sitting of the court on March 1, the trial Judge fixed May 6 to deliver her judgement, after the lead defence counsel, Olasupo Shasore, SAN, and the  Lagos State Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Adebayo Haroun, adopted their final written addresses.

The 53-year old Dane was arraigned on June 13, 2018, on a two-count charge of murder, punishable under Section 223 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos, 2015, which prescribes the death penalty, if convicted. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Mr Nielsen was said to have killed his wife, a musician also known as Alizee, and his daughter on April 5, 2018, at about 3.45 am at their Banana Island residence in the Ikoyi area of Lagos.

#upjudicialsalaries

In 1933 Holdsworth wrote:

“The remuneration of the Judges is not sufficient to induce the ablest Lawyers in the prime of life, to accept judicial office. If that state of affairs is allowed to continue, it must have serious effect upon the administration of the law. It will impair those intellectual standards which have made our English legal system a great legal system; it will tend to impair that law- abiding instinct which is the condition precedent for the maintenance of a high standard of civilisation, and it will weaken the chief remaining guarantee for the prosecution of the liberties of that subject.” More than seven decades on, we should still heed his warning.