KINGSLEY EBERE
A 28-year old father, Amechi Ogo, will spend the rest of his life in prison custody for allegedly defiling his 4-year old daughter after his wife denied him sex in Asaba, Delta State.
P.M.EXPRESS reports that it was the judgment of the presiding Judge, Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge, of the Delta State High Court sitting in Asaba, who sentenced Ogo after he was found guilty of defilement and was subsequently given maximum sentence for the dastardly act.
The convict, Ogo, was arraigned before the Court on a charge of defilement for having unlawful carnal knowledge of his child on 31st May, 2018, contrary to Section 218 of the Criminal Law of Delta State.
He was subsequently arrested and charged before the Court and faced trial after the Police found him culpable for his conduct on the innocent victim.
The prosecution led by the Director of Sexual Offences Unit, Ministry of Justice, Mrs P.U. Akamagwuna, told the Court that the defendant came home on a fateful day and demanded for sex from his wife. When his wife turned him down and left the house on an errand, he forced himself on the victim and while he was still in the act, he was caught by a neighbour before he fled the scene.
However, the defendant was later arrested and detained for interrogation, where he reportedly made confessional statement, which was tendered in Court.
During the trial, the defendant retracted his confessional statement and denied committing the offence.
Delivering judgement on Wednesday 1st February, 2023, Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge held that the evidence of the four-year old child and the witness, who caught him in the act, together with the defendant’s own confessional statement, proved beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence.
Justice Azinge held that the defence raised in the confessional statement of the defendant, to the effect that he lost all sense of reasoning after a native doctor laid hands on him and directed him to have sex with any woman he saw, was untenable and an afterthought.
He described the defendant as a paedophile, whose conduct in raping his own daughter was callous, animalistic, barbaric and against the laws of God.
She stated that society needed to be protected from persons like the defendant who prey on children.
The Court thereafter sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Speaking on the judgement, Mrs. P. U. Akamagwuna said that the State Ministry of Justice will continue to aggressively prosecute all sex-related offenders in line with the Ministry’s zero-tolerance policy for such heinous crimes.
The convict has since been registered in the Delta State Sex Offenders Register and his details have been uploaded to the national database.