A closer scrutiny reveals Miss Chidinma is a troubled teen. She has been
sexually abused serially by those least expected. Her life may never
remain the same again.
The April sun was going to bed. Somewhere
around Isheri, a Lagos suburb, a 15-year-old girl too was hurrying
homeward. She wanted to arrive home before dusk. Suddenly, she struck
her foot against a stone half buried in the earth.
The
teenager hissed and made to continue with her journey. But one of her
footwear did not obey her. A strap had snapped in one of the flip-flops
that covered her dusty feet. Chidinma Olosota (not real names) hissed
and moved on. After taking some steps, she decided to wait for a mobile
cobbler to rectify the situation.
She looked around and
sat at the front of a house. It was a decision that would affect her
life. Not long after, a young man approached her, offering to help. The
unsuspecting girl took the extended hand of help. A few hours later the
young man raped her. Not only that, she was prevented from leaving the
house.
Two days after, Chidinma struggled home to her already
exasperated parents who were beside themselves with worries over the
disappearance of their daughter. After showing her face at home, she was
bundled straight to the church where the pastor lectured her on the
gains of being an obedient child. It was the return of Chidinma’s father
that exhumed any dirt the teenage girl thought had been buried.
The father insisted that he be taken to the house she spent two days.
Reluctantly, the girl led her father to the house she spent the last two
days. As soon as the father sighted the young who allegedly housed his
daughter for two days, he was overcome by emotion and a shouting match
ensued. Invectives and insults were hurled from both sides. Irked by the
insolence demonstrated by the young man, Chainman’s father made for the
Isheri Police Station to report the matter.
At the police
station, the matter was assigned to an elderly police officer who is
also said to be the Station Officer. The officer Mr Ajayi, according to a
petition signed by 25 rights groups, blamed the girl for the rape
“because she ran away from home.”
Also, she “was severely beaten
by Inspector Ajayi with her father’s approval on the ground that she
caused what happened to her”.
Meanwhile, that was just
the beginning of other harrowing experience which the girl would go
through in the hands of this particular law enforcement agent and his
colleagues. “Inspector Ajayi then asked that Chidinma (not real name)
remain at the police station for a couple of hours in order for her to
‘calm down’.
"Confident that Inspector Ajayi held a position of
trust, Mr Olosota (not real name) complied with the instruction and left
for work hoping that his daughter would soon be allowed to return home.
Whilst at the police station, a number of police officers on duty
sexually assaulted her, some fondled her breasts and others verbally
abused her.
All of these took place in the presence of Inspector
Ajayi and another female officer who goes by the name of Happiness,”
alleged the petition which copies were sent to the the Inspector General
of Police, Lagos State governor, Lagos State deputy governor, Office of
the Public Defender (OPD), Divisional Police Officer, Isheri Police
Station, Lagos, Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty
Alleviation (WARA) and the Attorney General of Lagos State.
It
continued: “Chindinma (not real names) was held at the Police Station
all day till late in the evening without being offered any food. When
she pleaded with Inspector Ajayi to release her to return home, he
paraded her around the holding cells threatening detention with the male
inmates. Ensuring that she was frightened enough, Inspector Ajayi took
her back to his office.
In his office, he told her to write her
statement and as she was writing, he was robbing her back telling her
that he wants her to undress, when she refused, he threatened her. In
her words: ‘Inspector Ajayi locked his office and told me that he wants
to have sex with me and if I don’t agree, he will detain me till
tomorrow and carry me and the boy to court so that I will go to prison’.
Apparently
scared, she allowed him have his way. Right in the police station and
right on the police desk, Inspector Ajayi raped Chidinma (not real
name). At 9pm, Miss Chidinma (not real name) was released to go home”
Chidinma confirmed the incident to Saturday Mirror adding that when he
gave her a sachet of table water after and then allowed her to go home.
She added that when she got home, she just went to bed without informing
anybody of the incident.
The petition, however, alleged further
that: “Inspector Ajayi did not take down Chidinma’s statement or the
statement of the perpetrator and did not advise her to visit a general
hospital for the necessary medical examination immediately after rape.
He didn’t even open a case file for her. He only invited her and her
father to the station the next day to go for a pregnancy test at Calvary
Hospital, Omole Phase 2”.
But the teenage girl’s ordeal did not
end there. On May 16 she was also raped. This time, the perpetrator is
an acclaimed brother of a shop owner at Reality Plaza, Isheri. Her
account: “A boy called IK now took us to the house. As we were going my
friend excused herself saying she was to run an errand for her mum. Ike
and I continued. When we got to the house, IK asked me to come inside
but I refused. He now begged me to come and that he did not want to
bring his sister’s phones outside. On getting inside, he asked to sit
and offered me a newspaper.
He told me he was going inside to
bring the phone. When he came back, he knelt beside me told me that
there was no phone but that there was something he needed from. I asked
him what. He then went inside again and brought a knife and asked me to
pull off. He said he is a cultist and that he had done it before, that
he would kill me and throw my body away in the night. When I refused he
pressed the knife on my tummy and neck. When I saw blood, I started
pulling off. I had on a gown and a pair of shorts. As I was doing that
the N5, 000 which I kept in my knickers fell out and he picked it He
asked me to lie down and I refused so he finally pushed me down and
raped me.”
At the last incident, the girl could no longer hold it
in. She returned to the shop with the aid of some good Samaritans and
raised some dust. When her father got wind of the incident, he asked the
daughter again to go to the police station, but she refused. On further
probing, she finally owned up on why she did not want to return to the
police station: she had lost confidence in the police.
That was
when she opened up and told her father about her harassment by the
officers and eventual rape by Ajayi. Saturday Mirror was at the said
police station but everyone contacted declined to speak. Our
correspondent was directed to the office of the Police Public Relations
Officer. Frequent visits and calls to the officer, however, yielded no
results. Twice her phone was picked by her orderly who promised to relay
the message to her.
A message to the effect was also sent to her
via her facebook account. Saturday Mirror was also at the office of the
Officer in Charge (OC) Human Rights of the Lagos State Command Deputy
Superintendent of Police (DSP) Amhedu, who is a lawyer.
Amhedu,
who declined to speak with the press because he was not in a position to
do so, said his office was aware of the matter. He also directed our
reporter to the PPRO. However, a source in the Human Rights unit
disclosed to Saturday Mirror that the matter was actually brought to the
attention of the unit and that it was taken up and investigated.
The
source added that the Commissioner of Police had been advised on the
matter. Probed further, the source who disclosed that the unit has in
its fold many lawyers of long bar experience added that during
investigation, the victim, her father and the suspects including the
police officer alleged were invited for interrogation.
“It was
then that we discovered that the girl was wayward and that the father
was trying to use her to extort money from Ajayi and the Nigerian
Police. “It is true that Ajayi flogged her but he never raped her as
claimed”, it added.
Asked how they came about their conclusion,
the source continued: “In front of everybody we asked the policeman to
strip and he did but he was not wearing the type of underwear the girl
said he had on. We also sent a police officer to his office, it was not
as the girl described. There was no television set and there was no
couch.
The girl was just lying “We have reprimanded Ajayi. The
police have no right to administer corporal punishment which he did by
flogging the girl. We have recommended that he be sent on a six months
course on human rights. We have also charged the first suspect to court.
Though he claimed, he did not rape her; the girl was a minor then,
hence could not give consent.
That is defilement. He has been
charged to court and remanded in prison custody” The source also
dismissed the claim against the third suspect, IK, saying he was
culpable and that the girl’s father also wanted to exploit the young man
and his sister.
The source, however, reprimanded the girl’s
father accusing him of wanting to use his daughter to exploit the said
police officer who was actually his friend before the incident.
Source: National Mirror
