A 30-year-old graduate of University
of Lagos, Ikechukwu Obasi has been declared wanted by the police for raping a
9-yr-old minor Nofisat. Mrs. Bilikis Balogun said that day was a sad day when she learnt that her innocent nine-year-old
girl, Nofisat had been sexually assaulted by their 30-year-old neighbour,
Ikechukwu Obasi, while she was in the market.
“He has fled his apartment since the
incident. But I just want him to face justice and get punishment for what he
did to my daughter,” she said.
“I have never thought that the man
could do that to my daughter. He was such a friendly person in our compound.
All I know about him is that he is a ‘Yahoo-Yahoo guy’ (a description for young
men who specialise in internet fraud).
According to Bilikis, she was in the
market when her daughter came crying, and told her the story about how their
neighbour took advantage of her at their 83, Aina Street, Pako Aguda home, in
Surulere, Lagos.
Nofisat, a quiet and shy girl, whose
eyes showed the painful memory of the experience she had gone through, told our
correspondent that she did not suspect anything when Ikechukwu came into the
room where she was reading in their apartment and gave her a N1,000 note to go
and buy food for him.
She said, “I bought the food and took
it to him. But because the food vendor did not give me back N850 change, he
said I should go back and collect it. When I brought the change back to him, he
locked the door.
“He then used a cloth to cover my
mouth and I could not shout. He then carried me to the bed and did it. When he
finished and I was bleeding, he said I should not tell anybody.”
Later that afternoon, the girl narrated
what Ikechukwu did to her to another resident of the compound, who spotted her
crying in front of Ikechukwu’s room.
Ikechukwu’s Facebook page states that
he attended the University of Lagos and studied Psychology even though this
could not be verified as a result of the fact that he did not state when he
graduated.
The case was reported at the Aguda
Police Division, Surulere, but the police said they had been unable to take any
action because the culprit had fled.
However, Ikechukwu’s family had
approached Nofisat’s family, pleading to pay monetary compensation to settle
the matter.
“How can they tell me they want to
pay N40,000 so that I would forget my daughter was raped? All I want is justice
for my daughter. They have refused to produce the man,” Nofisat’s mother said.
When our correspondent spoke with the
investigating police officer in charge of the case, he explained that he was
still on the trail of Ikechukwu.
“We cannot refer to the case as a
rape, it is defilement. But in the meantime, the two families are trying to
settle. I have asked the family of the victim to come to my office but they
have not come,” the IPO, who pleaded anonymity, said.
Child Rights Activist, Mrs. Esther
Ogwu, has called upon the police to do more than just tell the family of the
suspect to produce him.
She said, “The police should do a
thorough job of tracking down the young man. Who knows the kind of fetish thing
he might have done to the girl?
“This is a lesson to parents to be
wary of neighbours they leave their children alone with.”
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