- Suspect who defiled and abandoned four-year-old girl at refuse dump site still at large
The Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court sitting in the Ikeja area of Lagos State has sentenced a 25-year-old teacher, Chukwunonso Okafor, to life imprisonment for defiling a 3-year-old girl in the state.
The presiding judge, Justice Abiola Soladoye, convicted and sentenced Okafor to life imprisonment on Wednesday, May 28, 2025.
The judge held that the prosecution proved the three-count charge of sexual assault by penetration, defilement, and indecent treatment of a child against the teacher.
Justice Soladoye held that the survivor testified before the court and identified the teacher as the man who sucked her breast and penetrated her vagina.
She said the testimony of the 3-year-old girl was corroborated as she gave compelling evidence of how the teacher sexually assaulted her.
Justice Soladoye said: “You descended so low by having oral sex with a three year old baby.
“You are everything a teacher should not be and you are barbaric.
“Upon all the evidence adduced before this court, I hereby convict you on all the three-count charges.
“You are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment on count one, life imprisonment on count two, and seven years jail term on count three.”
The judge added that the sentencing would run concurrently and that the convict be named as a sex offender.
The Lagos State counsel, Ibukun Ibikunle disclosed that the teacher committed the offences in the Ikotun area of Lagos in December 2022.
Ibikunle told the court that the convict sexually assaulted the minor by putting his penis into the girl’s mouth and caused her to perform an oral sex on him.
The prosecutor also told the court that Okafor flogged the 3-year-old girl and sucked her breasts.
She added that the offences violated Sections 135, 137 and 261 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.
In the meantime, a suspected rapist who allegedely defiled a four-year-old girl in Kontagora area of Niger State, after forcefully abducting her from her parents while they all slept in front of their house due to the hot weather condition is still at large.
Arewa PUNCH gathered that when the parents woke up, they could not find the girl and thought she had sleepwalked while they were asleep.
Their search for the missing girl yielded no results; as such, they raised an alarm, which led their neighbours and other sympathisers to their aid.
Sources said it took several hours before a neighbour found the missing girl at a refuse dump site with blood running down her thigh.
Following this discovery, the rescue team suspected the worst and took her back to her father.
The girl’s father, Hudsaine Abubakar (not real names), granted Arewa PUNCH an interview wherein he narrated what actually happened.
According to him: “We were outside our house due to the heat, but I later told the family to go inside because the breeze had started blowing and before long I went into the house to sleep.
“I woke up again and noticed that they were still sleeping, so I woke them up to enter the house because it was also getting late. When they entered, my wife said she didn’t see one of my daughters. So we started looking for her, thinking she must have woken up and entered another place in her deep-sleep condition.
“When we couldn’t find her, it was then it dawned on us that someone must have carried her away while we were asleep. We raised an alarm, and neighbours came out and assisted us to search for the little girl till 3 am.
“Later, when the early morning prayers were called, and we still did not find her, we all decided to go and pray. After the 5 am prayers, people came to tell us that she had been found in a refuse dump site and could not stand up by herself
“When we asked her how she got there, she told us that she was taken to an uncompleted building by an unknown person. When we did a thorough check on her, we noticed blood stains in between her legs, and we concluded that she must have been raped,” Abubakar said.
Arewa PUNCH further learnt that the little girl was taken to the Kontagora General Hospital where doctors confirmed that she was indeed raped severally.
The hospital also recommended that the parents immediately transfer her to another hospital because the medical personnel could not handle her case.
Continuing, Abubakar noted, “We took her to the Kontagora General Hospital. The hospital staff checked her and they said her situation was beyond them and that if we are willing, they will give us a referral letter to take her to Sokoto State, where they believe her case will be adequately attended to.
“We agreed, and the hospital management took the responsibility of conveying her and the mother to the hospital in Sokoto, payment of the bill, feeding and return home.
“The treatment took two weeks, and she was discharged to return home. The hospital management told us to observe her and bring her back for the second operation in six weeks. But when we returned, Dr. Fati and her staff from the Kontagora General Hospital came and ran a check on her and left.
“Later in the evening, she called to inform me that while checking my daughter they noticed some issues and asked me to prepare along side her grand mother to come to Minna to run another check,” he said.
Abubakar, who said the incident happened in April, said he had been suffering since he relocated to Kontagora. He also said he has handed over the case of his daughter to God because God allowed it to happen. Otherwise, it would not have happened.
“It is an act of God or a temptation which God allowed. I leave everything to God. I thank the hospital management for the assistance my family got. Without assistance from the hospital, it would have been very difficult to handle the situation. Currently, I can barely feed my family
“The hospital through the support of Dr. Fati paid and took care of everything. They asked us not to pay anything for the treatment, and we are grateful to her and her team in the hospital. I have been suffering with no peace of mind for a whole year after relocating from Gulbin-Boka, my ancestral home town to Kontagora due to insecurity.
“In spite of the hot weather condition while there, we were usually forced to sleep indoors because of fear of attacks,” he said.
A Director of Planning Research and Statistics in the Niger State Ministry of Women Affairs and Local Development Mary Yisa and her colleague, Rachel Twaki, Director of Social Welfare Services confirmed the rape incident and said the matter was brought to their notice at the ministry.
“The four-year-old girl was raped in Kontagora. According to the story, because of the heat, the family decided to sleep outside within the compound to take some fresh air and some people forcefully picked her while they were all asleep and took her to an unknown place where they raped her and all her organs came out.
“That was how they had to rush her to a specialist hospital in Sokoto to take care of her, and presently, I think she is being taken care of,” they further explained.
