I just received the lovely news that Akintoye J. of the High Court of Lagos State yesterday delivered judgment in the case of The State v. Onuoha where the court convicted and sentenced the defendant to 16 years in imprisonment for the rape of a 14 year old girl. #SayNoToRape
I became acquainted with this case in my former law firm @Babalakinandco when we received the report of the rape incident several years ago and even though we didn't have the first right of prosecution, the firm diligently supported the good team from the Lagos State Ministry...
... of Justice and sent a lawyer from the firm to attend the proceedings every single day from the arraignment until the conviction yesterday. Kudos to Team B&C and in particular Martina Aguocha @LlilMizRed for her diligence and steadfastness.
Incidentally this is my second involvement with a rape case and the first continues to haunt me 10 years later. Hopefully I can now get some closure.
Sometime in 2010, as Head of ABSU Law Clinic I received a phone call that students were about to lynch a security man at a private students lodge, Divine Favour for defiling his niece who was less than 10 years old. They had already started beating him when I got the call.
To avoid an extrajudicial killing & its attendant repercussions I called the Law Clinicians who resided in the lodge to take over the situation, calm the students and report the case to the Police Station. They did exactly that and handled the situation creditably.
A few hours later, I returned to Uturu and then headed straight to the Police Station where I expected to meet the IPO and see the animal. Guess what? There was no IPO and no suspect. Why? There was no record of any such report. I was livid!
The Police had received an oral report and asked my guys to come back on Monday to make written statements. In the meantime they promised to detain the man pending investigations. Instead they released him and the man promptly sneaked out of the State & returned to Imo State.
Even as law students, we didn't give up easily as we wrote a Petition to the DPO in charge of the Isuikwuato Divisional Police and paid visits there even as the expense of our security as it had become our word against that of the Police officers on duty.
In the end the DPO believed us but gave us a Bill of what we must pay before they can send a team of Policemen to another State to effect the arrest of the man. That signaled the end of the story as despite our best efforts, we were unable to raise the funds.
The criminal justice system in Nigeria is still heavily titled in favour of rape suspects or defendants and against the victims. A lot still needs to be done and it is therefore gratifying to read reports of the very rare cases of successful prosecution of rape defendants.
This is a call to other law firms to devote a few hours a week to provide pro bono assistance to the overwhelmed Ministries of Justice in different States in their fight against rape. Kudos to those who are doing so already. If we are to #SayNoToRape all hands must be on deck.
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