Justice for the defiled child in Niger State

IT is really astonishing that in a country bedeviled by socioeconomic challenges and where many compatriots are lamenting biting hunger and heightening insecurity, a demented pervert still had the time to plan and execute the criminal act of defilement of a four-year-old girl-child. The girl’s distraught parents woke up from sleep in front of their house after receiving natural breeze to tide them over the hot weather, only to later discover that their four-year-old girl had been abducted and sexually assaulted by a suspected rapist.

The incident allegedly happened in the Kontagora area of Niger State. The child was initially thought to have sleep-walked and mistakenly entered into a house other than her parents’. But she was found half-dead at a refuse dump in the early hours of the following morning with blood and bruises in her private parts.

Her situation was so grave that she had to be referred to a hospital in Sokoto, Sokoto State, for treatment because the Kontagora General Hospital could not handle the case.

It was an awful treatment of a child by an adult who is patently irresponsible and wicked. It is difficult not to regard individuals who engage in sexual assault, especially against minors and impressionable children, as having mental issues. What sexual pleasure can a full grown man with a stable mind possibly derive from a four-year-old girl? Yet, doctors at the Kontagora General Hospital confirmed that the little girl was so severely raped that she could no longer walk when she was found at the refuse dump! It was a classic case of utter wickedness and insensitivity by the sexual predator who, regrettably, is yet to be identified and apprehended.

It is really disturbing that the suspect is still at large and it is hoped that the police will intensify their investigations and ensure that the long arm of the law catches up with the outlaw soonest. 

Defilement of a child carries life imprisonment but the culprit has to be identified and arrested before he can be tried and sanctioned. While the police may want to throw their drag. net very wide with a view to catching the culprit, they should not ignore those around the victim and her parents, like neigh-bours and family members such as uncles, cousins and so on.

The circumstances surrounding the abduction of the girl tend to suggest that the suspect is probably familiar with the girl, her parents and their routine. It would, indeed, be surprising if this dastardly act was not perpetrated by someone who is familiar with that neighbourhood. 

Unfortunately, the victim may not be able to identify the suspect if and when caught, not just because she is too young to do that but also because she was most probably abducted when she was literally asleep. Nonetheless, we expect the doctors at the Kontagora hospital, at the instance of the police, to have collected requisite evidence of defilement on the girl so that the same could be matched with the DNA of the suspect when he is apprehended.

Ordinarily, a child should not be on her own, especially at night, but that would appear to be the case. Yes, the parents were supposedly around her when the incident happened but the fact that she was whisked away for hours without their knowledge suggests that they did not exercise sufficient duty of care. The story is distressing: the suspect took an impressionable child who knew next to nothing about what was happening around her, to an unknown place where he raped her and all her organs came out! It is terrible that anyone would contemplate doing such evil to a child, let alone carrying it out, but these are evidently perilous times when parents and guardians have a duty to scale up their oversight functions over their children and wards. Parents should be more careful and mindful of the fact that minors are vulnerable.

We commend the management of the Kontagora General Hospital for giving the victim first aid, as it were, owning up to a lack of capacity to handle the child’s case and for promptly referring her to a hospital in Sokoto where she could get superior service and treatment that her condition required. It is also exemplary that the Kontagora hospital reportedly took the defiled girl to Sokoto in their vehicle and also underwrote the medical bill. This is a welcome official intervention to the emergency situation which is bound to improve the state government’s rating in the estimation of its citizens. Indeed, the reaction of the Kontagora hospital to the misfortune of the victim and her parents is worthy of emulation nationwide. 

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Meanwhile, the father of the victim has reportedly resigned to fate, tagging the ugly incident an act of God, a euphemism for his disinterest in pursuing the matter any further. However, that cannot and should not be the official position. Therefore, the police are enjoined to launch a painstaking inquiry into the incident and ensure that whoever is responsible for the criminal and morally reprehensible act is apprehended and punished to the fullest extent of the law. The instant case is a criminal matter that pits the State against the suspect, and should be pursued to the logical end, regardless of the opinion of the parents of the victim to the contrary. Perhaps it should be noted that for every hour that the pedophile remains a free man, he constitutes a veritable danger to the society, so nothing should be done to let him go scot-free or incentivise others who may want to copy his callous and hideous action.

The burgeoning spate of crimes in the society is worrisome.

Perhaps more worrying but not really surprising is the inability of the instrumentality of deterrence to rein in the tendency signifi-cantly. And we believe that this is down to the badly damaged moral value system which has yet to be fixed by stakeholders despite several calls we and others have made for its retooling.

Unless and until the fundamental issue of moral decadence is decisively addressed, the society will continue to witness bizarre and callous conduct that is physically injurious and that reflects negatively on the country’s image, like the instant case of a four-year-old girl being removed from the custody of her parents and defiled by a sexual predator!