A High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State has sentenced a 28-year-old father, Amechi Ogo, to life imprisonment for r@ping his four-year-old daughter.
The defendant was arraigned on a charge of r@pe for having unlawful carnal knowledge of his child at Asaba on May 31, 2018, contrary to Section 218 of the Criminal Code Law of Delta State.
The prosecution led by the Director of S£xual Offences Unit, Ministry of Justice, Mrs Patricia Akamagwuna, told the court that the defendant came home on a fateful day and demanded s£x from his wife.
When his wife turned him down and left the house on an errand, the defendant forced himself on his four-year-old daughter. A neighbour caught him in the act and he bolted away from the scene.
The police subsequently arrested him and he made a confessional statement, which was tendered in court.
In his trial, the defendant retracted the confessional statement and denied committing the offence.
Delivering judgement on Wednesday February 1, 2023, Honourable Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge held that the evidence of the four-year-old child and the witness, who caught him in the act, together with the defendant’s confessional statement, proved beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence.
Justice Azinge held that the defence raised in the confessional statement of the Defendant, to the effect that he lost all sense of reasoning after a native doctor laid hands on him and directed him to have s£x with any woman he saw, was untenable and an afterthought.
She described the defendant as a pa£dophile, whose conduct in r@ping his own daughter was callous, animalistic, barbaric and against the laws of God.
She thereafter sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment.
