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| Inspector Rebecca |
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| Anyaegbulam |
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| Okoronkwo |
Nigerian laws stipulate that cases that have to do with Sex and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) should be charged to court, but the police, who are the first responders to such cases, through their actions and inactions, deprive survivors’ justice, JULIANA FRANCIS reports
Policewoman facilitates suspect’s escape
A widow, Mrs.
Salisu, has been waiting for justice for three years. The wait appears to be
going along the pattern of the classical absurd theatre play of Samuel
Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot.’
Salisu’s 16-year-old daughter was raped in 2019 by their married neighbour, Raymond Makinde, in his late 40s. Raymond is a father of four. Salisu is yet to overcome the anger and shock of how the case was truncated by a policewoman called Tina. Salisu said she didn’t know Tina’s surname or rank, but the woman was serving at Elere Police Station, Agege, Lagos State, when the incident happened. Salisu was overwhelmed with sadness as she narrated the incident.
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| Raymond |
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| Rebecca (Picture showing she's award recipient) |
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| Okey Ten Kobo |
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| Mustapha Sodique |
Because she
needed to work extra hard to cater for her children, she took to trading. In
November of 2019, she noticed all was not well with her youngest daughter. The
girl was given to bouts of crying and refused to speak about her grief. Salisu
also noticed that whenever she left home for the market, Raymond was always
lurking around the compound, as well as when she returned home. Salisu said: “I
didn’t know he was monitoring my movement. One night, my daughter woke me up,
saying she would kill herself if we didn’t move out of the compound. I was
disturbed.”
One day,
Salisu got home and saw Raymond at the front of the compound, when she got to
her apartment, which was behind the building in the ‘face-me-I-face-you’ (a
multi-room) compound, she found her daughter weeping.
She said: “I
immediately rushed to the front of the compound and rained curses. I noticed
that Raymond swiftly moved away.”
Raymond
eventually confessed, perhaps for fear of Salisu’s daily curses. When Salisu
queried her daughter, the girl confirmed it.
Salisu added:
“He had raped her twice in the bathroom at knifepoint. He usually monitored
her; whenever the compound was lonely, he would go after her. On the first day
he raped her; she defecated on her body and lost consciousness. After Raymond
confessed in the presence of his wife, he pleaded with me not to tell anyone or
else he would kill me.” She reported the matter at Elere Police Station, where
the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) was Tina. Tina asked for N10,000 for the
medical examination at Mirabel Centre; though the centre doesn’t charge fee
from rape survivors. Salisu gave N7,000, promising to give a balance of N3,000
to Tina.
Salisu began
to suspect foul play when she noticed that Tina and Raymond were always
whispering and laughing at the station. Later, Tina allegedly told Salisu and
her daughter to ‘settle’ with Raymond.
Salisu
recollected: “Tina told my daughter to see the case as a ‘business deal’ and
that she would now be making money for her mother, that Raymond would ‘settle
well.’ She told us she just concluded a case, where the rapist had to buy a
sewing machine for the victim, and the case was settled. She reminded me that I
was a widow, struggling with money, that now money had finally ‘located’ me.
She said that my daughter was not too young to be having sex with men.”
When Salisu
insisted on justice, Tina insulted her.
“She advised
me to go and buy antibiotics for my daughter. When I asked for the refund of my
N7,000, she said she had used it,” recalled Salisu.
The widow
recollected that when her late husband’s brother came to the police station,
Tina cornered and told him that, “Raymond and my daughter had been lovers for
long, and that I had been collecting money from him. Tina told him that it was
because Raymond refused to give me money for a new wrapper that I accused him
of rape. My brother-in-law didn’t ask for my side of the story; he just left
the police station. I now went to a human rights activist, Esther Child Rights
Foundation.”
The Executive
Director of the Foundation, Mrs. Esther Ogwu, said that she demanded a refund
of the N7,000 from Tina. She also insisted that the necessary papers should be
provided so that the survivor could go to Mirabel Centre for medical
examination.
Salisu
recollected: “I was walking past Raymond’s window when I heard his wife on the
phone telling someone that Tina said she wouldn’t go ‘below N200,000.’ Earlier,
Tina had told me that she would show me that she had been a policewoman for
over 20 years. She said that it was only when I saw the suspect in court, that
I would demand justice.”
The case was
charged to Samuel Ilori Court, Ogba, Lagos State. Before they went to court,
Tina collected N10,000 from Salisu to charge the case to court.
“After that,
she disappeared from the court premises. Hours later, the court asked us to go
and return the following day, that Tina had not registered the case. Tina came
later and promised that she and the suspect would be in court the following
day. She asked us to get to the court by 7am. The following day, she didn’t
come to court until 11am,” Salisu explained.
The widow
said that while they were waiting and watching, Tina and Raymond arrived on a
motorcycle. Salisu alleged that Tina slowed her movement, allowing
Raymond to fall behind.
Raymond
suddenly bolted, jumped onto the same motorcycle that brought them, and the
cyclist zoomed off.
What happened
to Salisu and her daughter’s experience exemplifies how rape survivors and
their relatives are denied justice.
Several
times, the police have been accused of deliberately bungling rape cases for
pecuniary reasons. Years back, the police were accused of lacking professional
training to handle sex and gender-based violence (SGBV) cases, especially rape
and defilement cases.
This led to
the creation of gender desks in different police stations and formations.
Gender desk was created in 2012 and kicked off fully in 2013. It was the idea
of former Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase, when he was the
Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) in charge of the Force Intelligence
Bureau (FIB). It was created to attend to gender-related issues, especially
about women, children and vulnerable persons. It is also called the Family Unit
because of its efforts to handle family-related issues with bias to
gender-based violence. The officer in charge of these units is the Force Gender
Coordinator, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Margaret Ochalla.
According to
findings, police personnel, who were supposed to handle SGBV cases, were given
special training and placed on gender desks. But the act of seeking
gratification from survivors and perpetrators has made the desk ineffective.
Due to the
dearth of data in Nigeria, especially among human rights organisations, it’s
tough to track the number of cases which have been truncated by the police.
Since the police are the first responders, the way they handle the survivors
and their cases is critical to the success of trials of rape cases.
Where is Tina?
Salisu
explained that the last time she heard from Tina was when she promised to track
Raymond. For two weeks, our reporter repeatedly called Tina’s MTN number but it
was mostly switched off. The Truecaller showed ‘Tina Elere.’ In those two
weeks, the phone number rang only twice and it was late at night, but she did
not answer the calls. Our reporter also sent an SMS, but didn’t receive any
reply.
On January 18th,
our reporter went to Elere Police Station. A policewoman there said there was
no policewoman there named Tina. The Divisional Crime Officer (DCO) said there
is a policewoman called Tina, but she was not on Gender Desk. He said Salisu
should come to the station to mention the unit that handled her case. Our
reporter also tabled the matter before the Lagos State Police Public Relations
Officer (PPRO), a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), Mr. Adekunle Ajisebutu,
but as at the time of filing this report, he was yet to respond.
Our reporter
also tried to locate Raymond, but learnt that since his escape from the court’s
premises in 2019, nobody had seen him. His family had also moved out of the
house at Agege. Attempts to get his phone number were abortive.
Police asked victims to change statement, complainant alleges
While Salisu
is still waiting for justice, Philip’s experience is already unfolding. On May
7, 2021, Philip, a laundry operator, was in his shop when his 14-year-old
niece, Ogechukwu, came to him, crying.
He said:
“When I asked her why she was crying, she said that Prophet Wisdom Okoronkwo,
the prophet at the church where her mother worships, had been sexually
violating her and her younger sister, Faith, who is 12 years old. I was
shocked. She said she was tired of it.”
Philip is the
younger brother of the girls’ late father. According to Philip, he and his
elder brother pooled their resources together to build a house. They lived
there together until the man died. Philip said his elder brother’s wife and
children continued to live with him. He alleged that his brother’s widow was
dating the prophet. He also alleged that the woman, without consulting her
husband’s relatives, told Ogechukwu to go and live with Wisdom and his two
wives.
Perturbed by
the accusation of the girl, Philip called his eldest brother and told him about
the violations. Ogechukwu also insisted that she had already told her mother
about the abuse.
The man
advised Philip to take the girls to the Ikotun Police Station.
Philip said:
“Ogechukwu was brave in revealing the abuse because the prophet had told her
that she would run mad if she told anyone. We took Faith, the victim’s sister,
along to the station. The prophet told the police that I was the person that
instigated the girls to lie against him. But after much denial, he accepted
that he had sex with both girls, claiming that it was the handiwork of the
devil. After his confession, the police said that I should settle with him. The
prophet asked me to tell him how much I needed to take care of the health of
the girls. Faith said it happened when her mother sent her on an errand to the
prophet’s house. She said that it happened twice. Ogechukwu, on the other hand,
said that it happened four times.”
Philip said
that the pressure from police and the prophet to ‘settle the matter’ was so
much that he had to go to Esther Child Rights Foundation. The matter was then
transferred to the Gender Unit, Police Headquarters, Ikeja, Lagos State. The
case was assigned to Inspector Rebecca Jacob.
Philip said
that a week later, the Gender Unit at the command invited him. But before the
invitation, the prophet and the girls’ mother, who insisted that Wisdom was
innocent, had been visiting the Gender Unit, along with Faith.
He recalled:
“When I got there, I met my sister-in-law, the prophet and Faith. The police
asked Faith to go behind my seat and then they told me that the girl had a
confession, that her conscience had been troubling her. Faith then said that
she lied, and that I was the one that asked her to lie against the prophet.”
When Philip
asked what he stood to gain by causing his nieces to lie against Wisdom, the
police told him that it was because he wanted to sleep with his brother’s widow
and wanted to take over the building which he and his brother built.
He said:
“They collected my phone and attempted to detain me. They asked me if I knew
that Faith was having sex with her younger brother, Chibuzor, who is just five
years old. They also asked if I knew Ogechukwu and Faith were lesbians. They
were just saying all sorts of rubbish.”
When he
realised that they wanted to detain him, he called the human rights activist,
Esther Ogwu. He was then allowed to leave. He was invited another time; this
time alongside Ogechukwu, but when he wanted to enter the office with the girl,
the police refused. He waited outside, then he suddenly heard someone shouting
and Ogechukwu suddenly stormed out of the office, with tears in her eyes.
He said: “I
asked her why she was crying, she said that the police asked her to say that I
asked her to lie against the prophet. When she refused, they started shouting
at her. I told her not to worry, that they had been bribed.”
Philip said
that they were waiting for the matter to be charged to court, instead he
received an SMS from the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) on November 24th,
that the case file has been received.
The activist,
Ogwu, said: “I was shocked when he forwarded a message he received from the
DPP. This was a matter that had not gone to court. The way it works is that the
matter will have to be taken to court before being taken to the DPP. I have
been asking myself why the police took the matter to the DPP, instead of the
court. The prophet has not been arraigned. Defilement is not even a bailable
offence. True, he was detained, but rather than charge him to court, the police
released him. I had to call the DPP and also to write a letter of complaint.
The DPP has expressed shock over the matter getting to them without first going
to court.”
I’m innocent of all allegations, says Wisdom
Wisdom,
however, denied all the allegations levelled against him by Philip. He said that
his only offence was assisting the widow after Philip accused her during a
family meeting of being responsible for her husband’s death and demanded she
should take an oath.
The prophet
stated that Ogechukwu decided to lie against him because he flogged her for
being wayward and returning late from school.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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