Motorcyclist remanded for defiling 6-yr-old daughter

43-year-old commercial motorcyclist, Amarachi Chukwuneke has been remanded in a correctional facility by a Lagos Magistrate Court, Ogba for allegedly defiling his six-year-old daughter.

Chukwuneke was arrested by the police at the Festac Division, after a neighbour in the Amuwo Odofin area of Lagos made a report.

The neighbour was said to have observed the girl walking into the compound with uneasiness while returning from school on November 5, 2019.

The woman reportedly asked the minor the cause of her condition, but she was initially reluctant to speak up.

After some persuasion, the girl reportedly opened up, alleging that her father inserted his finger in her private parts and had sex with her.

Alarmed by the revelation, it was gathered that neighbours confronted Chukwuneke alongside with the child, who repeated the claim in the father’s presence.

The case was transferred from the Festac Division to the Gender Unit at the police headquarters in Ikeja which charged him with defilement.

The little girl, in her statement to the police said: “Me and my brothers live with our daddy but we are always with our neighbour because my daddy does not give us food. Anytime we sleep, my father would touch my bumbum (private parts) and put his finger inside my bumbum. One day, he put the thing he uses to pee (urinate) inside my bumbum. I cried that day because blood came out and my daddy used water to wash my bumbum and begged me not to cry and that I should not tell anybody.”

The suspect however denied the allegation, insisting that his daughter had complained to him some months earlier that she was feeling pains in her private parts. He said he checked and saw some fluid, for which he bought drugs to treat.

He said: “I got married in 2012 and we are blessed with three children. In June 2018, my wife left me because she got pregnant for another man in my hometown in Imo State.

“In August 2018, I travelled to the village and brought my children with me to Lagos. They were living with me until the girl complained to me that her bumbum was paining her.

“After I checked, I realised some fluid was coming out of her private parts. Thereafter, I went to see a chemist woman who gave me drugs. After she used the medication, it stopped. Later on, she complained about the same issue to me. I went to a nurse who also gave me some drugs for which I paid N500. She told me to buy a certain drug that will finally stop the symptom.

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“On November 4, 2019, my daughter came to me again and said she was feeling pains in her private parts. I tried to look for money to buy drugs for her. The following day when I returned from where I went to get some money, I met some neighbours with her. They said my daughter told them someone had been having sex with her.

“My daughter was asked who had sex with her and she said I was the one. When I wanted to ask her the same question, my neighbours refused. That was how I was brought to the police station. I did not have any sexual intercourse with my daughter.”

The one count charge brought against Chukwuneke reads: “That you, Amarachi Chukwuneke, on November 4, 2019, at 9pm, at Amuwo Odofin, Festac, in the Lagos Magisterial District, did unlawfully defile a six-year-old girl by having sexual intercourse with her, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 137 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.”

His pleas was not taken, as the presiding Chief Magistrate, Mrs O. Sile-Amzat, who adjourned till February 27, 2020, ordered that he be remanded in correctional centre, and that the file should be sent to the Directorate of Public Prosecution for legal advice.

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