Dad of 11-year-old raped to death recounts depressing incident

That said Wednesday afternoon, there was a deafening silence from the entrance to their residence.

It took several knocks at the door before an elderly woman reluctantly responded. Looking spent and sober, she was the grandmother of Favour Okechukwu, an 11-year-old Junior Secondary School 3 pupil gang-raped to death on Olanrewaju Street, Ejigbo area of Lagos.

In the family’s expansive living room on Oreofe Street, a stone’s throw to Olanrewaju Street, the victim’s parents sat on separate couches lost in grief. While the mother buried her head in her right palm, Okechukwu’s father fiddled with his phone, shaking his head in dejection intermittently.

“Thank you,” he muttered, breaking the silence after several minutes. “Let me keep on with what I am passing through. I cannot talk about it for now,” he added, before resuming his deep silence.

Throughout our correspondent’s 30-minute stay with the family, the bereaved mother was in a pensive mood.

Okechukwu was running an errand for her mum on Wednesday, September 30 when she went missing, throwing the family into confusion.

She was found dead the following morning on Olanrewaju Street, with her private parts bloodied.

The incident was reported at the Ejigbo Police Station and five suspects were said to have been arrested in connection with the incident.

“Everything is in God’s hands,” the grandmother, who did not disclose her name, said.

“The blood of the innocent child will fight. It was around 3pm and her mother only sent her to buy something at a nearby shop. What could have attracted them to her? She didn’t have breasts and has not attained puberty stage. Her parents cried so much that they wanted to collapse,” she stated.

A neighbour, Mr Austin Ebong, said the incident had instilled fears in residents, adding that parents were now scared of sending children on errands within the neighbourhood.

He said, “People have been taking personal measures to secure their children. I withdrew my child from a far distance school to a nearby school. I had been contemplating withdrawing her from the school but this incident made me take the decision fast. It’s a motorcyclist that took her to school and brought her back; you can’t trust anyone.

“She (Okechukwu) had borrowed her classmate’s notebook on Wednesday to copy notes she missed. She gave the friend her wristwatch to assure her that she would return the note on Friday because Thursday was a public holiday being Independence Day.”

One of Okechukwu’s teachers at a college in Ejigbo said the girl’s classmate, Chinwe, was traumatised by the tragedy.

“Chinwe, could not sleep. She and Favour (Okechukwu) lived close to each other and they always came to school together. Her mum said she was awake at 1am. She had to give her drugs. It is hard to believe she is gone,” the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated.

The state Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, visited the victim’s family on Tuesday and directed the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Panti, Yaba, Yetunde Longe, to deploy additional detectives to arrest the fleeing culprits and bring them to book.

The police spokesperson in Lagos, SP Muyiwa Adejobi, told our correspondent on Saturday that more suspects had been arrested.