Fathers Responsible For Over Half Of 70 Defilement Cases Recorded In Edo – Edo Govt  

The Edo State Government has disclosed that more than 70 cases of defilement were recorded in the state between January and July 2026, with fathers allegedly responsible for over half of the cases involving minors.

The Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Eugenia Abdallah, disclosed this on Thursday at a bi-monthly press conference organised by the state Ministry of Information and Strategy.

Abdallah, who spoke alongside the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Kassim Afegbua, and the Managing Director of the Edo State Geographic Information Service (EdoGIS), Dr Innocent Bello, said the victims allegedly abused by their fathers were between two and 10 years old.

She said, “Mostly, 50 per cent are abused by their own fathers, with the victims ranging from 2-10 years. For instance, there is a little girl currently in our custody who was impregnated by her father. She is just 14 years old and is eight months pregnant as we speak. The case was reported to us by a neighbour.

“When we asked her about her father, she told us that she had lost her father and pleaded with us not to have him arrested. Meanwhile, she is the only person who can tell us where her father is.”

The commissioner reaffirmed the state government’s commitment to protecting vulnerable residents, stressing that survivors of abuse would receive support beyond the reporting of their cases.

“The victims are not merely trained but provided opportunities for economic advancement; and social-protection programmes increasingly produce measurable outcomes,” she added.

Speaking on measures to improve security across the state, Afegbua reiterated the government’s ban on the movement of motorcycles within the Benin metropolis, citing security concerns.

“We are not pretending about it. The reason why this was done was purely for security reasons, and the kind of reports we get daily have become a security concern to us. People use Okada (motorcycle) to kidnap people, to do robbery. They carry their passengers, take them to a lonely place and dispossess them of their belongings,” he said,

Meanwhile, the EdoGIS Managing Director, Bello, attributed delays in processing land documents to the detection of fraudulent documents submitted by some applicants.

“What is responsible for most of the delay in land documents processing is as a result of detection of fake application documents in many cases, and that includes survey plans, task clearance, fake ID and so on,” he said.