CHUKWUDI UKALA (a.k.a U.K) vs. THE REPUBLIC

1.0 Background 1.1 This is a criminal appeal from the judgment of the Circuit Court ‘1’, Accra dated 30 March 2016 that convicted appellant of the charge of robbery and sentenced him to 25 years imprisonment in hard labour (IHL). The facts are that on 21 August 2015, about 8:50 in the evening at Haatso, Accra, the appellant, a self-styled businessman together with two others at large robbed Kyito Peter and Shamsudeen Mohammed, operators of a mobile money vending shop called Winners Multimedia of one Sony laptop valued at GH¢2,500, five assorted mobile phones estimated at GH¢900 and recharge cards valued GH¢1,500 and cash of GH¢22,000. 1.2 The brief facts are that the appellant on 21 August 2015 earlier visited the shop at about 5:30 pm and withdrew GH¢800 from his MTN mobile money account. At about 8:50pm, on the same day, appellant went to the shop again claiming to withdraw GH¢500 from the same account. Processing of the second withdrawal did not succeed. It was abort...