This Court, per KEKERE-EKUN, JSC in the case of SIMEON v. STATE (2018) LPELR-44388(SC) Pg. 25-26 paras. B has held and I very much agree that: “The hearsay rule is to protect an accused person from being convicted upon the testimony of a witness who did not see, hear or perceive in any other manner, the facts given in his testimony. Where it is shown that the evidence relied upon to convict an accused person amounted to hearsay, an appellate Court would quash the conviction. See IJIOFFOR vs THE STATE (2001) LPELR-1465(SC) @ 19 B-F.”
THERE CAN BE CONVICTION BASED ON THE TESTIMONY OF A SOLE WITNESS
The law is trite that unless where the law prescribes otherwise, there can be a conviction based on the evidence of a sole witness. Such evidence of a sole witness must be cogent, strong, credible and reliable before a Court can rely to found a conviction. See Oduneye v The State (2001) 2 NWLR (pt 697) 311, Abogede v State (1996) 5 NWLR (pt 449) 279 at 280, Ighalo v The State (2016) LPELR – 40840 (SC). 27 Ordinarily, the credibility of evidence does not depend on the number of witnesses who testify on a particular issue, but it depends on whether the evidence of a single witness is believable and accepted by the Court and if so believed by the Court, then it is sufficient to ground a conviction. SeeAli v The State (1988) 1 NWLR (pt 68) 1, Lase v The State (2017) LPELR – 42468 (SC), Abogede v The State (1996) 4 SCNJ 227.
— J.I. Okoro, JSC. Chibuike Ofordike V. The State (SC.695/2016, 2019)