16 year old girl dies of strange ailment after she was gang-raped in Lagos

A 16-year-old girl simply identified as Bosede, has lost her life to a strange ailment she incurred after she was gang-raped by four boys at her home in Oke Eri area of Oworonsoki, Lagos on January 6th.

According to Vanguard reports that Bosede's father, Mutiu, said Bosede after the attack, fell terribly ill and after many tests without any knowledge as to what was really wrong with her, Bose died on November 4th. Narrating what happened to his daughter, Mutiu said

“I gave Bosede N100 when I came back from my carpentry work to go and buy food for her dinner that night around 9 o’clock, not knowing that night would be the beginning of a journey of no return for my daughter. Before the unfortunate incident, Bosede was learning fashion designing in the community because I could not afford to send her and her junior brother, Abdul, to school after the demise of their mother, but I made sure I took care of them with the little I had so that they could survive because there were five siblings but others died at birth.

At 10pm when she had not returned, I was worried and her stepmother and I started looking for her. We didn’t see her until around 12 midnight when we saw her crawl out from a structure four buildings away from my house crying and her body drenched in blood. That was when she told us that four boys had raped her. She named the son of one of my co-tenants, Rilwan, as the leader of the gang but all the attackers had fled. I couldn’t do anything that night because it was late.

 I went to Lalonge Police Station the following morning to report and they arrested two of the suspects, Rilwan and the one popularly called Bobo. That was when my co-tenant, Rilwan’s father, started fighting me, saying he will kill me if I didn’t effect the release of his son. He went to the police station to lodge a report and the police came to arrest me. 

The police now turned the case against me to the extent that my wife had to borrow N5 000 to bail me. That was how the two suspects who allegedly tortured my daughter and gang-raped her were released and I was left to face the problem of taking care of her. I took her to a hospital nearby and they told me they had checked her and she was given drugs and they assured me she was going to be okay. But since that day, I noticed that she was no longer herself. She was always quiet and complained of pains. 

Four months after, I noticed that she started emaciating. Someone saw her and I narrated what happened. It was that person who introduced me to Alhaji Rasheed Awofeso who swung into action immediately. He went back to the police station and told them they must investigate the case. T

hey made one arrest because other suspects fled immediately they heard government was now involved in the case. We collected the last result of the tests carried out on my daughter on Friday, November 3 but that day she was in unbearable pain. I had the test result but didn’t know what was written inside. When I couldn’t stand the way she was wriggling in pain, I took my television set and sold it for N7, 000 and, with the money, I rushed her to a nearby private hospital, gave them the test result and told them we were going to the General Hospital on Monday to commence treatment before this happened. 

The doctor read the test result and admitted her to commence treatment, though he said I brought her late. When I saw the way the girl was wriggling in pain and shouting for help that she didn’t want to die, I ran out because I couldn’t bear it. But in less than 30 minutes, she gave up the ghost. Though my daughter is dead, my pain is the way the father of the boy who my daughter said led the gang of four that raped her mocks me, saying I will never see his son to arrest and that my life and that of my family is not safe. 

Despite my loss, I am being threatened because he belongs to a feared group. I want government and kind hearted Nigerians to help me get justice for my daughter because some people see the gang-rape and death as a normal thing.'

Awofeso Rasheed, the Co-ordinator of Child Protection Network in the Kosofe local government area, who got involved in the case, said

“I immediately went to the community and spoke to the survivor and the father. I was made to know that the son of a co-tenant of the father and three other boys raped her. I inquired about the steps the father took after the incident and he said he reported the case the following day but there was no serious arrest made from January to the time the case got to me on July 7. By the attitude of our unscrupulous policemen, the matter was never taken up. There was no record of the incident reported to them.  

 I told the officers at the police station that they must incident the matter and, from there, I collected the form for Health examination and we took Bosede to MIRABEL because the girl couldn’t stand on her feet. She had emaciated and had abandoned her fashion designing job. Each time we took her out, we had to carry her. Medical examination was carried out and it was recommended that she needed immediate attention at LASUTH and was expected to be admitted but, somewhere along the line, the people the father met there (LASUTH)   told him he was going to pay some money and, because he didn’t have the money, he took the girl back home. On Monday when we went back to MIRABEL, officials said the time for emergency attention had passed, going by their recommendation. 

“I then wrote a letter to the Child Unit of the Ministry of Youth and Social Development that something drastic needed to be done to ensure the girl survived but someone told me there that if I really wanted the girl to survive, I should write to a particular top official. I wrote the letter and, some hours later, I got a call for appointment and I went there with the father. But the social workers we met too became a problem as they were demanding money from someone that did not have money to even take care of the child. The father ran away again. It took him another three weeks to take Bosede back. At the CPN, one of us volunteered to take the raped girl to Ifako Ijaye General Hospital where three tests were recommended and two had been done and the last was scheduled to be done on Friday but she developed crisis on Thursday when she was rushed to a nearby private hospital and died on Friday. One of the four boys who allegedly gang-raped Bosede was arrested and is being remanded in Adigbe Juvenile Remand Home, Abeokuta because he too is a minor”.