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From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
After about three years of prosecution, a Makurdi High Court in Benue State on Thursday, acquitted Andrew Ogbuja, a lecturer at the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo, over the rape and death of Ochanya Ogbanje, a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 2018.
This is even as the Federal High Court siting in Makurdi, in a separate case, convicted, Ogbuja’s wife, Felicia Ochiga-Ogbuja, for negligence in the rape of the deceased teenager.
It would be recalled that Ogbuja and his son, Victor who has since been at large were accused of serially raping Ochanya until she fell ill, was subsequently admitted at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Makurdi for two months before she later died on October 17, 2018.
While efforts by the police to arrest Victor had been on with no positive result yet, the Benue State government, on October 10, 2019, arraigned 54-year-old Ogbuja before the Makurdi High Court on a four counts charge of rape which led to the death of Ochanya.
Delivering judgment on the case, on Thursday, the judge, Augustine Ityonyiman, of the Benue State High Court in Makurdi, held that the prosecution failed to prove its four-count charge against Mr Ogbuja.
However, in Mrs Ogbuja’s case which coincided with that of her husband, the judge, Mobolaji Olajunwo, held that the defendant failed in her duty to protect Miss Ogbanje from “being sexually abused by her son, Victor.”
In her verdict, Justice Olajunwo stated that while Ochanya was being abused by the son of the defendant, the defendant who owed the deceased girl the duty of care to ensure that she was protected from such an act, failed in doing so even when her daughter, Winifred drew her attention to the sexual assault being meted out on Ochanya.
Justice Olajuwon also held that Mrs Ogbuja “made it impossible for the NAPTIP investigating officer to see and interrogate” her daughter, Winifred, in the course of the investigating the matter.
She further posited that “the evidence that Ochanya told the defendant (Mrs Ogbuja) about what was going on, and was not successfully challenged,” proved NAPTIP’s case, stressing that Mrs Ogbuja failed to challenge the prosecution’s evidence that she “threatened to send Ochanya out of her house if she told anyone about the sexual abuse.
The court held that the prosecution had been able to prove all the ingredients contained in count one of the charge.
“I hold that the defendant is guilty as charged in respect of count one. The defendant is guilty as charged contrary to Section 314 of the Criminal Code and she is hereby convicted,” Mrs Olajunwo declared.
