By Bamidele Kolawole
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A 10-year-old minor, Esther Friday has met her untimely death after she was allegedly raped by a farmer, Ikumuyi Isreal in his bedroom in Igbotako, Ondo State.
The young man while testifying before the court said that he never intended to rape the girl to death but had mistakenly suffocated her to death while pressing her mouth with his cover cloth in order to muffle her cries for help.
He claimed that Esther visited him and slept on his bed.
The 29-year-old farmer, has been ordered to be remanded at the Owo correctional centre by an Akure Magistrates’ Court sitting at Oke-Eda for alleged rape and killing of the 10 year-old Esther Friday.
According to the charge sheet, the accused person allegedly committed the offence at about 4:30pm, at Akinfosile Village via Igbotako, in Ondo State on February, 2, 2021.
The prosecutor, Inspector Uloh Goodluck while presenting the facts of the case before the court said that the accused person killed Esther, by raping her to death.
He said that the offence committed by the accused person contravened sections 316, 319(1) of the Criminal Code Cap 37, Vol. 1 Laws of the Ondo State of Nigeria 2006.
Goodluck urged the court to remand the accused person in prison custody pending the outcome of the legal advice from department of public prosecution
In his statement before the police, the accused person narrated that after his secondary school education, he stopped and began to farm with his mother.
He narrated that on the fateful day, he came from the farm and was in the kitchen, cooking his dinner when the deceased Esther Friday came to meet him in the kitchen and asked him to give her money.
He stated that he refused and told her that the money he had with him was meant to cook soup.
The deceased, according to his statement, had left but came back to him requesting for the money again.
He claimed that he left the kitchen for his room and she followed him to his room, begging him for money still and he had to give her N100 and slept with him.
He stated that as she laid beside him on the bed, he developed amorous feeling for the girl as he did not have any girlfriend. He explained that none of the girls he approached for relationship would have him.
He wrote “I don’t mean to rape her, but when she slept with me on bed. I felt aroused and decided to quickly have sexual intercourse with her. I did not force her to have sex. We were together on the bed. Trouble started when I was trying to put my penis inside her vagina, it did not enter very well.
“My penis did not penetrate despite all my efforts to make sure I insert it. It did not fully enter. I covered her mouth with my cover cloth so that she could not raise alarm, she was crying, but nobody could hear or come for her help.”
Due to the cloth used in muffling the deceased, she could not shout and was thereafter suffocated to death.
He stated that late Esther was with him on the bed inside his room from 4:30pm till 6:pm.
“She died when I was having sex with her.” He admitted.
He said he became afraid after the deed had been done and he could not come out of his room when they began to look for the girl.
He confessed that he was in the room with the deceased when he heard one Mummy Peju passing by the door saying that they were looking for one girl that got missing.
After that, he testified that one Baba Awu called him. He was about to ask him some questions when some people came in to his room and started beating him.
In the process, some of the neighbours came into his room and found the dead body on his bed. They beat him before they handed him over to policemen.
According to the prosecution, the girl’s parents were from Isoko and came to farm and live in Akinfosile. They lived with their children at the community and in the same neighbourhood with the accused person.
The deceased had told her mother who was processing cassava flakes that she was pressed and asked for permission to visit the toilet but made a detour to Ikumuyi’s house.
The mother was busy with her chores and did not remember to look for her daughter until the father, Friday Egbenere came back from the farm and asked for the whereabouts of the girl.
They had looked for her around the vicinity but they could not found her and had to report it to the village head at Akinfosile. Afterwards, a team was sent out to look for her until they eventually discovered her in the accused person’s room and got him arrested.
The prosecution claimed that Ikumuyi Isreal had lured the victim into his room with the promise of giving her N100 and had his way with her while the community people looked for her.
At the sitting, the plea of the accused person was not taken and he was not represented by any lawyer.
Magistrate N. T Aladejana subsequently remanded the accused person in Owo correctional centre pending the outcome of DPP advice.
The case was adjourned till May 3, 2021 for mention.