[CHILD ABUSE] 30YR OLD MAN RAPES A 9YR OLD GIRL

December 2, 2014 was a sad day for Mrs. Bilikis
Balogun. That day, 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.
The neighbour told her to go and report the
incident to her mother in the market.
But by the time they got back, Ikechukwu had
locked his room and fled. He has not been seen
since then.
Ikechukwu’s phone number which was provided
to our correspondent, has not been available as
well.
However, our correspondent visited his Facebook
page with the name Eyekay Da Stika Obasi, where
he posted photos up until January 2, 2015. He
had yet to respond to a message sent to him as
of the time of filing this report.
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.”