**
On January 18, 2014, Adeleke, who is an apprentice meat seller
at Tinubu Market in Iyana-Ipaja, Lagos, allegedly added his name
to a long list of s*xual predators walking the streets of Lagos.**
That day, which would change the life of 12-year-old Bisola (not
real name) forever, was when Adeleke ambushed the young girl
and defiled her for one hour.
Adeleke was eventually arrested but in his attempt to escape
from the police custody, he was hit by a moving vehicle when he
ran across the road.
Adeleke’s boss supplies meat to Bisola’s mother, a food vendor.
It was learnt that the suspect had on occasions delivered meat
to the girl’s mother.
Giving detail of the incident, Bisola narrated;
“I followed a friend to buy sugar in the market (she sells sugar to
assist her family) and when I was coming, he (Adeleke) told me
to follow him to their shop to collect meat for my mother. I
followed him but I did not enter the shop. There was nobody else
around. It was after 7pm. He told me to enter but I said he
should bring out the meat. He then said I should take the meat
from the freezer. As I attempted to open the freezer, he grabbed
me and tied a cloth over my face and mouth. “He held me down
and pulled off my pants. He did not leave me until around
8.30pm. I could not shout. The place was dark.”
The girl paused, her eyes moist with tears as she narrated the
story. “I am happy a vehicle hit him,” she said.
Bisola was defiled for an hour by her estimation. She said she
remembered the time Adeleke finally released her because she
had to look at the clock on the wall of the shop because she
knew her mother would have been looking for her. The young girl
rushed out of her captor’s embrace bleeding and bruised. But
shame and confusion would not allow her to go straight to her
mother.
Her mother narrated that on that fateful day, she had expected
Bisola to return but when she did not, she retired to bed,
thinking that her daughter must have stayed late in her friend’s
house.
“I heard her enter the house later. But around 3am, she started
to sob loudly,” she said.
Both mother and daughter live in a small decrepit wooden shack
around Gowon Estate.
When the woman went to check on her daughter, she noticed her
underwear was soaked in blood. which had started running down
her legs. She was about to scream but quickly changed her mind
because she was afraid of alerting her husband, Bisola’s step-
father, to what had happened.
“But by morning, I could not hide it anymore. She told me the
person responsible for it and around 5am, we went to report at
the Gowon Estate Police Division, Ipaja. The man was later
arrested,” the woman said.
Bisola was taken to the hospital and a doctor who examined her
immediately recommended surgery to repair her damaged private
part. After the surgery, she was on admission for two days.
The doctor’s report obtained by our correspondent indicated that
she was brought to the hospital “bleeding profusely from second
degree laceration in her private part and broken hymen.”
But a day after the young man was arrested, he was released by
the police.
Director of the Esther Child Rights Foundation, Mrs. Esther Ogwu,
said she intervened in the matter when the victim’s step brother
reported the incident to her.
She told Saturday PUNCH, “It was really absurd that he would be
released that way. I could not believe that in the face of the
increasing child abuse and molestation being reported every day,
the police could still release a suspect without promptly charging
him to court.
“The girl was defiled on a Saturday; by Monday, the man was
arrested. But by Wednesday, the family said they went to the
police station and were informed by the investigating police
officer that he had been released.
“I informed the Lagos Public Advice Centre of the development
and officials of the centre contacted the police division. The IPO
was forced to rearrest the boy. I just wonder if the police have
heard of the Child Rights Act.”
One of the reasons for enacting the Child Rights Act in 2003 is
to stem the tide of child abuse and molestation in Nigeria and
reinforce the legal provision against it.
Adeleke was rearrested and locked up preparatory to his transfer
to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Yaba.
But the suspect had a different idea. He decided to escape. As
soon as the IPO turned her back, Adeleke ran out of the station
and was about to cross the road when he was hit by a
commercial bus.
Of course, the bus did not stop, as he would later tell our
correspondent in the hospital.
An OP Mesa military team, who saw him injured on the road
took him to the hospital.
Asked why he decided to escape, he said, “I was just afraid. I did
not know that it would become such a serious matter.”
But when he was asked why he defiled the girl when he could
have paid to sleep with a commercial s*x worker, he said he did
not r*pe her.
“I did not r*pe her sir. She is my girlfriend. We have been dating
since early last year. She always called me ‘okobo’ (a Yoruba
word for eunuch),” he said.
Bisola’s mother would later refute this claim as a concocted
story because she only moved to Ipaja with her daughter in
August 2013.
Adeleke disputed that Bisola is just 12 years old which makes
her a minor.
He said Bisola had told him that she was 18 years old. But when
our correspondent met the girl, there was nothing to indicate
that a man could be fooled into thinking she could even be up to
15 years old.
The suspect said, “That day, I went to buy fuel and she followed
me. When I returned home, I told her to leave but she would not.
She was tickling me and calling me okobo.
“I told her to leave and I saw her off but she came back and
started tickling me again. I then decided to do it. But when I
pulled off her underwear and realised she was still a virgin, I
decided to leave her but she started taunting me again. Then I
did it. I did not know that she would bleed like that and that it
would become a police matter.”
When asked why he blindfolded and muffled the girl’s mouth
with a piece of cloth, Adeleke denied doing that.
The young man, who said he was an indigene of Abeokuta, only
finished primary school.
It’s been learnt that since Adeleke got to the hospital, his
relations had not come to pay for his treatment. The hospital is
planning to discharge him prematurely. It was learnt that his
treatment had been stopped.
But there is fear that Adeleke might escape if discharged as the
IPO had only visited the suspect once.
Adeleke said his mother was late but added that his brother and
boss were looking for money to offset his medical bills.
Meanwhile, Bisola’s mother and step-father have changed
course on the case.
When our correspondent visited them on Sunday, the step-father,
who did not hide his anger, said he had no money to prosecute
the suspect.
“They should release him. I don’t have any money to move
around to prosecute anybody. We have spent enough money
already. Nobody should come and disturb me again,” he said.
Bisola’s step-father, who did not seem to be literate, was told
that prosecuting Adeleke was not his job but that of the police
and that he did not have to spend money.
“What about moving here and there when the police call us or
when we need to go to court? The man himself is poor. It is not
worth it,” he said.
Bisola’s mother, who seemed helpless in the face of her
husband’s attitude, also concurred.
“We spent money on her treatment; we have even incurred debt.
We will leave the matter to God,” she said.
Source: Punch Nigeria
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1 comments:
Na wa oo!!