But for the intervention of the Federación Internacional de Abogadas – Federation of International Women Lawyers (FIDA), the raping-spree and assault on a 14-year-old minor in Junior Secondary School (JSS2) by her father would have lasted longer with the attendant trauma.
He (the convicted felon) was said to have travelled to Ghana, to plead with his ex-wife to allow his daughter to return to Nigeria, as he couldn’t bear the thought of his only girl child leaving home, running with her mother.
At that point, the mother, who had initially hesitated, was compelled to release her for the biological father oblivious of the bleak future awaiting her, as her father would be the ‘destroyer-in-chief’.
A few months after her return, the father, with impunity and without conscience and guilt, would forcefully conjugate with her, sometimes at knife-point.
Wondering how a father could have a strong erection staring face to face with her blood daughter in both vaginal and anal conjugation amid begging, sobbing and lamentations till ejaculation, Alice Francis Ekah, a lawyer, made a case for a review of the relevant sections of the law regarding rape, especially when it has to do with minors.
“The penalty for such a gruesome display of reckless attitude towards girl children should be life imprisonment,” she advocated.
She, therefore, commended the efforts of FIDA for coming to the rescue; took up the matter with the police, and followed the litigation process through till the conviction of the randy serial rapist, one Uduak Oku Edet, a civil servant from Ikot E-Ekpene village in Ibiono Ibom local government area of Akwa Ibom State.
LEADERSHIP learnt the drug-infested father had exhibited a violent attitude with a series of domestic brawls with his wife, who later escaped to Ghana, for fear of being killed.
Narrating her ordeal, the minor recalled she was locked in a sex romp with her biological father between July 2018 and October 2019, with repeated assault and threat should she dare disclose such abominable escapades in their house at Ekpri Nsukara, Uyo, the state capital.
Fighting back tears, the victim recalled that in one of such incidents, the randy father had sex with her through the anus, which led to her experiencing difficulty in defecation.
Besides, she lamented that on another occasion, after returning from school during the holidays, her father inserted his finger into her vagina.
After the incident, she started experiencing pains in her private part with a swollen breast, which resulted in an infection followed by brown and black discharges from her vagina.
As if that was not enough, the convict was said to have flogged and stabbed his daughter on the head with a knife for taking food in the kitchen without the permission of her stepmother.
She said: “I was staying with my mother in Ghana before my father came and brought me to Nigeria to stay with him. Since then, he refused to take care of my mother. Sometime in July 2018, my father called me at night to see him in his bedroom because my stepmother was not around.
“When I got there, he asked me to lie down, which I refused. He forced me and had sexual intercourse and blood came out of my vagina. He removed his manhood, used saliva to rub on his penis and forced it again inside me. I started crying and he gave me paracetamol to take. I took it. And since then, he has been having sex with me several times.
“Each time I went for a vacation. Even the last time I went for mid-term break, he came and fingered me, so I decided to tell him to stop and he started hating me.
That was on 30th October, 2019. He then abandoned me at the school (name withheld).
“And, even when the school management called him that I was very sick, he refused to come and see me, except for one of my teachers, who helped me. My stepmother has been maltreating me. Even giving me food was a problem.
“I want to go back to my mother in Ghana. My father used to have sex me through my anus and I’ve been feeling pains there,” she said.
Despite the plea for leniency, having spent a couple of years on remand, the trial judge, Justice Bassey Nkanang, of the state High Court, sitting in Uyo, had no other option than to declare a guilty verdict on Edet. The court found him guilty of rape and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.
“The defendant is hereby sentenced to 14 years imprisonment and the same shall be computed from, and including 10th October, 2019, when the defendant was arrested, till, and including 3rd March, 2022, when the defendant was admitted to bail by this court.
“Upon reckoning with the aforestated period, the computation of the sentence shall commence till the entire term is completed. This is the judgement of this court in this case,” Justice Nkanang held.
The convict stood trial on a two-count charge of rape, punishable under section 367 and assault occasioning harm, under section 364 of the Criminal Code, Cap 38, Volume 2, Laws of Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria, 2000.
