3 friends Habeeb Adisa (25),
Kehinde Aderinoye (25) and Ilyas Ogundimu (27) raped one of their female
neighbours, a young woman,who was a close friends. This incident happened in a
neighbourhood in Iju area of Lagos.
The victim, 19-year-old lady, a
hair stylist, said she summoned the courage to speak about her ordeal because
she did not want the 3 friends to go free and do the same to someone else.
Narrating how she was violated
by the three men whom she trusted most in their neighbourhood, the victim said
that there was no way she could have suspected that within the 2 years she had
known them, that those 3 could have ever done what they did to her.
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| Habeeb Adisa |
Calmly, but with a lot of anger
and pain showing in her eyes, she said,
“I became friends with them as
neighbours two years ago when my mother first rented an apartment in the area.
“Kehinde began to make advances
to me. But I told him we were friends and did not want to be in a relationship
with him. I have always rejected his advances.
“Later he would tell Habeeb and
Ilyas to approach me to appeal on his behalf to accept his proposal, but I made
them to understand that I could not go out with him. But we still talked and
sat together in the neighbourhood as friends.”
Unknown to the victim, the
gentle disposition of her three friends was just a façade for the plan they had
hatched on how to sexually assault her.
On Wednesday, June 17, 2015, an
opportunity presented itself for the rapist friends to put their plan to work.
She said,
“In the morning of that day,
around 9.30am, I went over to Kehinde’s house like I usually did sometimes when
I had nothing to do at home. I trusted them completely and usually went there
to while away the time.
“Habeeb and Ilyas were there
also. We were just talking when Habeeb suddenly came to me and picked me up. He
threw me on the bed and I told him that I didn’t like that kind of play. I
said, ‘If this is part of your playful habit I am not up for it.’
“But as he threw me on the bed,
before I could stand up, he lay on me and pinned me down firmly. Kehinde
quickly came over and started to remove my underwear. That was when I knew what
they wanted to do. I struggled with them but they pinned me down and took turns
to rape me.
“When I was screaming, one of
them quickly went to the CD player, which was on at the time and turned on the
music to maximum volume so that it would drown out my voice.”
When they finished, the three
friends smiled at what they had done. They told her to pretend that what
happened to her was a mere sexual encounter.
“They told me to just forget
what happened and keep it between the four of us. But I realised that if I was
afraid of stigma and kept it to myself, they would walk free and even boast to
their friends about what they did to me. They would surely do it to someone
else,” Adenike said.
Bruised and battered, she
summoned the courage to approach someone she trusted in the neighbourhood and
narrated what happened to her. She was immediately advised to go to the Iju
Police Division and report the incident.
As soon as she reported, some
landlords in the area rose in the men’s defence.
Her mother said that because
the parents of the rapists are landlords in the area, they first threatened her
that if she decided to make the issue a police case, she would lose.
But on Thursday, after the
police had arrested the suspects, Punch correspondent witnessed as families of
the culprits and other residents of the area came out to the police station to
beg the victim’s mother.
The lady’s case highlights the
increasing incidence of sexual offences in Nigeria, where majority of sexual
offences go unreported.
On Friday, the spokesperson for
the Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Kenneth Nwosu, said that the suspects had
been charged to court.
Punch
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