Mighty Joe was arrested in 1973 while trying to snatch ₦10 from a bar attendant called Michael Osayunana.
On the morning of June 6, 1973, armed policemen arrived at Kirikiri prisons, in Apapa, Lagos, and marched straight to the cell where Isiaka Busari aka Mighty Joe had been waiting for his final days.
As the sound of footsteps became louder, from his cell, Mighty Joe, the self-styled ‘Strong man of Idi-Oro’, became apprehensive. He knew his day at the Bar beach had come. The previous day, his lawyer had informed him that his appeal for clemency to Governor Mobolaji Johnson failed. Death was inevitable.
Before the policemen got to his cell, he asked for a stick of cigarette. As he puffed the smoke into the air, the gates of his cell were opened. He was cuffed and led away from Kirikiri to the bar beach where a crowd of spectators was waiting to witness his execution.
At 11 am, an army officer gave the firing order and Mighty Joe was riddled with bullets. He yelled and protested his innocence but it made no difference.
May God bless everybody, both my friends and enemies. Tell my wife, my mother, and my in-law to keep fit,” those were his last words before he breathed his last, according to the Daily Times of June 7, 1973.
In the 1970s, the Lagos bar beach was the spot for executing convicted armed robbers and coup plotters. The likes of Ishola Oyenusi, Babatunde Folorunso, and other convicted armed robbers had had their days behind the stake.
In 1973 it was the turn of Isiaka who was arrested for armed robbery in 1971 by a team of policemen led by Assistant Superintendent of Police S. Fagbuyi at the Idi-Oro motor park in Mushin, Lagos.
Since his execution in 1973, some of the people familiar with Mighty Joe’s story and those who knew him personally have continued to argue that he was never an armed robber. But their voices pale when compared to the multiple historical accounts and media reports crediting several heinous crimes to him.
In our research, we found media reports and investigations describing him as “the savage legend who took over the reign of terror from Oyenusi.
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