Gang-Raped Girl, Gang-Raped Justice: How Nigeria Police Forced Victim To Free ‘Rapists’

Four boys raped her. Yet, there is no justice for her as the police allegedly forced her to free the rapists.
The Agbado-Oja community in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State is just a sleepwalking distance away from the ever-bustling Ishaga area of Lagos. Despite its proximity to the “Centre of Excellence”, the community typifies an eloquent statement in rustic retrogression — a place where poverty walks on all fours, clothed in the tattered attire of naked, running children, rundown ancient buildings and filth-filled streets.
But poverty is not the only thing that reigns unfettered here. The diabolic mixture of sexual abuse and ignorance appears to be equally holding sway.
Hawawu (full name withheld), the 16 year-old daughter of a struggling bricklayer and an apprentice tailor, recently became the latest victim of the rape virus currently running wild in the community. But in addition, there was the shocking, seeming police complicity in the brutal crime.
As the story goes, on the evening of March 30, Hawawu received a call from her male friend, Adeleke, for a meeting in his house. The previous day, Adeleke, a young man for whom Hawawu reportedly had a soft spot, had arrived in the tailoring shop opposite her house where she resumed apprenticeship two years ago, and a year after she dropped out of Primary Three at the nearby AC Community Primary School. Adeleke, in the company of two other boys, reportedly invited her to an event holding in his house. After the repeated call on Sunday evening, she left for his house. On getting there, Hawawu was said to be initially reluctant entering. Shortly after, Adeleke and three of his friends dragged her into his room after which four of them allegedly took turns raping her.
Later that night, they were said to have dragged the now half-conscious girl writhing in pains all the way down the staircases in the storey building then dumped her in front of her ramshackle house on 4, Isanmi Street in the Adubo-Agopani area of Agbado-Oja.

Hawawu’s father Yinusa Olarenwaju

Her father, Yinusa Olarenwaju, 43, was alerted by neighbours and he took her into the derelict, one room, face-me-I-face-you apartment, a sort of a boys quarters arrangement left to him by his father. It is this room with the brownish and wrinkled roofs falling off, and where he had shared with the victim and her younger sister, Amina, 13, since their mother, Tawa, left him about a decade ago, that he took his dying daughter into.
It was 11p.m. and, as usual, Mr. Olarenwaju was down and out and with no transport easily in site, he tried ‘managing’ the traumatized girl till the next day.
On Monday morning, a weeping Mr. Olarenwaju headed for the palace of the Baale (local chief), Sunday Oyeogun, to report the matter.
“After Hawawu’s father reported, I immediately summoned the parents of the accused boys,” Mr. Oyeogun told this reporter recently.
But rather than look out for the victim to extend to her the much needed medical care, they allegedly ‘gathered’ N200, 000 (Two Hundred Thousand Naira) and brought to the Baale to ‘kill’ the case. According to him, he refused and directed that the girl be treated as a matter of urgency before any other discussion.
He also, he said, advised the victim’s father to report the case at the Divisional Police Headquarters in the area.
Thereafter, a certain Alaba, a police officer attached to the Juvenile, Women and Children’s Unit, was assigned the case as the Investigating Police Officer (IPO).
That was where the case took a dangerous turn.