A motor park thug is on trial for allegedly stabbing a commercial bus driver with a bottle in the eye, blinding him in one eye.

Sodiq Adebayo was arraigned in a Lagos State magistrates’ court for damaging the left eye of Rasheed Lazeez.

Adebayo reportedly stabbed the yellow bus (Danfo) driver in the eye with a bottle at AP bus stop, Mushin area of the state.

Adebayo had told Lazeez to drive away from a spot he had wanted to pick passengers but Lazeez reportedly ignored him.

The suspect was said to have engaged the bus conductor in a scuffle which prompted Lazeez to disembark and intervene.

He reportedly went for a bottle, stabbed the driver in the eye and escaped.

After many months of manhunt by the police at the Mushin Division, he was arrested on December 3, 2019.

Adebayo, 25, told the police that he stabbed Lazeez because the driver assaulted him, adding that he ran away when he saw the severity of the injury.

He stated,

“On April 5, 2018, I was relaxing at the bus stop when a transport union member called Kola told me to help him collect money from Danfo drivers. While I was doing that, I told the driver (Lazeez) to move forward and he said I could not be controlling him.

“He came down from the bus and started beating me to the extent that he wanted to kill me. He beat me with a spanner. That was why I picked a bottle and stabbed him in the face. I ran away from Mushin to Apapa when I saw that the injury was much.”

But Lazeez said he was trying to break the fight between his conductor and Adebayo when the latter attacked him.

He said,

“As I was picking passengers at the bus stop that day, Adebayo was fighting with my conductor called Sherif. I came down from the bus to settle the fight but, he (Adebayo) started insulting me. He then left and came back shortly after, not knowing that he was with a broken bottle. He stabbed me in the eye and I fainted. That was the last thing I knew until when I regained consciousness at a hospital.”

Adebayo was brought before an Ogba magistrates’ court on three counts bordering on assault by a police prosecutor, Inspector Koti Aondohemba.

The charge read in part,

“That you, Sodiq Adebayo, did conduct yourself in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace by breaking bottle and stabbing one Rasheed Lazeez, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 168 (d) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2015.

“That you, Sodiq Adebayo, did grievously harm one Rasheed Lazeez by deforming him with a bottle on his left eye side, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 245 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2015.”

The defendant, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge and elected summary trial.

The presiding magistrate, Mrs K.O. Ogundare, granted him bail in the sum of N100,000 with two sureties in the like sum and adjourned the case till January 21, 2019.