• Lagos discharges driver accused of raping school pupil
The Court of Appeal in Lagos on Monday upheld the judgment of an Ikeja Special Offences Court which sentenced a driver, Francis Apai, to 15 years imprisonment for raping his employer’s 18-year-old daughter in Lagos.
Justice Sherifat Solebo had on June 11, 2020, sentenced Apai after finding him guilty of one count of sexual assault by penetration.
Dissatisfied with the judgement, Apai approached the appellate court to challenge his conviction.
But the justices of the appellate court unanimously affirmed the judgment of the lower court and dismissed Apai’s case.
The three-man justices of the appellate court are Onyekachi Otisi, Abdullahi Bayero and Peter Afeen.
The prosecutor, Ms Iyabode Oshodi, had told the court that the driver committed the offence on November 19, 2014, at the complainant’s home in Lagos.
While being led in evidence by the prosecution on January 7, 2020, the complainant gave a harrowing account of how she was attacked and raped by Apai, who was her mother’s driver.
“My mother is a businesswoman; he (Apai) also usually drove my father whenever my mother was not around and he took me and my younger brother to school,” she said.
The complainant said on the day of the incident, she was at home alone because her parents had taken her younger brother, who fell ill around 3am that morning, to a hospital.
She told the court that while she was preparing a meal in the kitchen, the driver approached her with a knife and threatened to harm her if she refused to accede to his sexual demand.
She said when she put up resistance, the driver dragged her to a bedroom in her home where he punched and raped her.
The victim told the court that she had to run out of the house stark naked to escape her attacker.
“When I ran out naked, my neighbour downstairs saw me and asked me to come into her house, but I refused because Francis (Apai) was with a knife and I was scared that he might come into the house and attack me.
“I ran across the street to another neighbour with blood streaming down my legs and they gave me a wrapper to cover myself up.
“My neighbours took me to a police station and a hospital,” she narrated.
The complainant’s father, a cleric, who also testified on January 7, 2020, said after he heard the news of his daughter’s rape, he returned home.
He said he noticed that Apai, while fleeing after the attack, left his shorts (underwear), a pair of slippers, a wrap of sweets and a half-smoked cigarette in the house.
A medical doctor, Dr Olusegun Bankole, of Alimosho General Hospital, while giving evidence, told the court that the complainant lost her virginity as a result of the forced penetration.
In another development, the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions has dropped a charge of defilement filed against a former driver of Beehive Nursery and Primary School, Ikeja, Kingsley Okwumbu.
According to legal advice dated June 7, which was made available on Wednesday, June 29, 2022, the charge against Okwumbu was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
The legal advice, signed by the Director of DPP, Dr Babajide Martins, was in response to a letter from the Divisional Police Headquarters, Isokoko, Agege, Lagos, dated June 4.
“Facts reveal that Page B1 Okwumbu was no longer the driver of the school bus as of March 23, when the alleged incident occurred as PageB1 had been relieved of the duty of driving the school bus on March 14, for non-maintenance of the bus.
“The statement of Page B3 – Osem Aba Mathew (a new driver), who took over from PageB1, also revealed that the school pupils were picked from their respective houses every day.
“There is an entry book and the same is completed by the bus attendant when pupils are returned. There was never a time when the bus driver was alone with any of the pupils on the bus.
“The above casts material doubt as to who in fact sexually defiled or molested Page A5 (the child). The law is settled that where there is material doubt as to whether the defendant commits the alleged offence, such doubt shall be resolved in favour of the defendant,” the legal advice said in part.
The DPP noted that information in the duplicate case file revealed that while the mother of the toddler was bathing her child, she noticed that she cried anytime she wanted to wash her private parts.
Upon enquiry, her daughter revealed that it was Okwumbu that touched her.
The DPP further said though the medical report indicated blunt forceful penetration of the child’s genitalia as facts in the duplicate case file, the allegations against Okwumbu were stoutly denied.
“In Nigeria, a person cannot be convicted of rape of a girl under 14 years of age upon the uncorroborated testimony of one witness,” the DPP said.
On April 19, Magistrate Ejiro Kubeinje of the Ikeja Magistrate’s Court remanded Okwumbu in the Kirikiri Custodial Centre for allegedly defiling the pupil.
