An Ikeja high court has sentenced a school teacher named Chukwu Ndubuisi to life imprisonment for defiling a six-year-old girl at Mind Builders School, Lagos.
Ndubuisi was the art teacher of the school as of June 2016 when the offence was committed.
He was first arraigned at the Ogudu magistrates court on a charge of forceful penetration but he pleaded not guilty.
Following the director of public prosecutions (DPP’s) advice, the teacher’s case was transferred to Ikeja high court.
According to NAN, he was arraigned on Monday before Sedoten Ogunsanya, the judge, on a count charge of child defilement.
In his verdict, Ogunsanya held that the prosecution proved his case against the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.
The judge held that the fact, circumstances, and quality of evidence against the defendant were compelling.
The court said that the first time the survivor told her mother of her experience was one day when she was discussing the case of a seven-year-old girl that was defiled and killed which went viral on social media.
She said the survivor whispered to her mother that she wanted to discuss something with her.
The judge said they went outside and the survivor narrated her experience to her and pleaded with her mother not to tell her father and brother.
The court added that the mother told the father, following which they went to her school but the art teacher was not around.
She said the parents reported the matter at Omole police station and the matter was investigated, and a test conducted on the survivor at Ikosi Health center revealed that the survivor had been defiled.
She said the matter was later taken up by the Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA).
Ogunsanya held that the account of the survivor and that of her mother was uncontroverted, corroborated each other and that they gave a good account of the assault.
The court said the defendant usually sends the survivor’s friend to call her.
The judge said the first time the defendant defiled her was in the female toilet and that the second time was in the art room.
She said the survivor told the court that sometimes her teacher (defendant) asked her to remove her uniform and put his “bumbum” into her “bumbum”.
“At another time he called her into the art room, he put her on the table, parted her panties and put his thing into my thing,” the survivor was quoted to have said.
She said the survivor told the court that when the defendant is finished, he would clean up the survivor with tissue paper.
The court held that the defendant had unhindered access to the child and defiled her several times.
Ogunsanya discountenanced the evidence of two prosecution witnesses, who are medical doctors for being contradictory, pointing out that they did not come as expert witnesses.
She also dismissed the submission by defence witnesses that the incident was not recorded on the school’s CCTV.
She upheld the result of the test conducted at the Mirabel Center which showed that, the survivor had torn hymen and reddish vulva and that there was evidence of forceful penetration.
She, therefore, convicted the defendant as charged.
O.C. Olagunju, the counsel to the defendant, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy.
He said no case of improper behaviour has ever been brought against the defendant nor had he ever had any case at any police station until this case.
But Jubril Kareem, the prosecution, argued that the law under which the defendant was charged does not give the court any discretion.
He urged the court to impose the mandatory sentence stipulated in the law.
The judge thereafter sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment.
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