A Nollywood actress, Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin, has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for spraying and stepping on the new Naira notes at a social event in Lagos.
Omoseyin was sentenced to a jail term by Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, after pleading guilty to the charges made against her by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Omoseyin was earlier 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 persons who gave her the money.
She was sentenced on Thursday by the court barely a year after she was handed over to the anti-graft agency for prosecution in Lagos.
Delivering judgment, Justice Aneke sentenced the defendant to six months’ imprisonment, effective from Thursday, with an option of a N300,000 fine to be paid into the consolidated revenue account of the federation.
Before the judgment, she had been granted bail on February 15, 2023, after pleading not guilty to the two-count charge brought against her in court.
One of the counts reads: “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 N100,000.00 (One Hundred Thousand Naira) issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria by spraying same in the said occasion and you thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 21(1) of the Central Bank Act, 2007.”
At the resumed hearing on Thursday, Omoseyin, however, changed her “not guilty” plea to “guilty”, in view of the overwhelming evidence against her.
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 that, “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.”
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, forensic report of her phone, a CD of videos showing her spraying the naira note, a flash drive from the event center together with the statement of the representative of the centre.
