An Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court has sentenced a security guard, Olawale Olarewaju to life imprisonment for having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl.
Justice Rahman Oshodi criticized lapses and delays in justice on the part of the Ikoyi Custodial Centre to bring the defendant, who had been in prison custody for eight years to court.
He said the case had been struck out for want of diligent prosecution by Justice Sherifat Solebo (rtd) when the custodial centre did not produce him before the court for arraignment regardless of the issuance of a production warrant between 2016 and 2019.
He said: the defendant was in Ikoyi Custodial Centre and remained there for about eight years from the day of his remand until he was produced before me on Jan. 3, 2023, for arraignment.
“The preceding demonstrates gaps in the operation of the Nigeria Correctional Service.”
While delivering the judgment, Oshodi held that the prosecution proved the ingredients of defilement with charge number LD/2359C/2016 against the defendant.
He said the survivor, (now 18 years old) testified before the court that she was 13 years old when the incident happened and that the defendant was a security guard at a construction site.
According to him, the survivor told the court that the defendant forcefully had sex with her when she went to fetch water at the site.
Oshodi said that the evidence of the survivor was corroborated with that of her father who was the prosecution witness two.
He said the survivor gave a vivid and unshaken testimony of what the defendant did to her.
The judge held that the defendant contradicted himself and made his evidence-in-chief unreliable.
He thereafter convicted him of the charge and sentenced him to life imprisonment.