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.”
Source: Punch
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