“We only slept together, I didn’t touch her” Trader Accused Of Defiling 7-Year-Old Girl Claims

A Lagos-based trader, identified as Ikechukwu Alu, 25, has been arrested by the police for the alleged abduction and rape of a seven-year-old girl, Punch reports.

According to the report, the trader, who resides in FESTAC Town, abducted the young girl named Victoria on Adeola Street in Amuwo Odofin, before taking her to a shop in a nearby market, where he raped her.

Sources say that the residents, who knew he did not have a child, asked him about the girl. They later poured ashes on him and reported him to the police at the FESTAC division when he did not give a reasonable explanation.

The victim reportedly told the police that the suspect “put his thing (manhood) in my bum-bum”. She was then taken to the Mirabel Centre at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, and a test carried out on her reportedly confirmed that she was raped.

Punch gathered that the suspect told the police that he had met the girl crying on Adeola Street and asked her what was wrong.

He said, “She said her parent sent her to buy a recharge card, but it got missing and as a result she was chased out. I told her to follow me to a place and promised to take her home afterwards. She agreed and that was how I took her to the shop. We only slept together; I didn’t touch her.”

Police prosecutor, Francisca Job, arraigned the suspect before an Apapa Magistrate’s Court on one count of rape. Job told the court, presided over by Magistrate A.O. Adegbite, that the offence contravened Section 137 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

The charge read, “That you, Ikechukwu Alu, on May 24, 2016, at about 5 am at 23 Road, FESTAC Town, Lagos, in the Apapa Magisterial District, did unlawfully defile a seven-year-old girl, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 138 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, Nigeria, 2011.”

Punch learnt that the defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge and elected summary trial.

Photo credit: Punch