A 28-year-old applicant, Agboola Adebayo, has reportedly defiled a 9-month-old baby in the White Sand Area of Ijora, Badiya, Lagos.
Adebayo was on Monday remanded in a correctional centre within the state by an Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court following his arraignment by the Lagos State Government.
The accused, whose residential address was not given, is in court on a two-count charge of defilement and causing grievous harm to the baby.
The defendant pleaded guilty to the charge.
Justice Rahman Oshodi thereafter remanded Adebayo at the correctional facility and adjourned the case till March 25 for hearing.
The state counsel, Ms Bukola Okeowo, had informed the court that Adebayo committed the offence on March 23, 2023.
Okeowo submitted that the defendant defiled the baby by having unlawful sexual intercourse with her.
The prosecutor also said that the defendant unlawfully caused grievous harm to the child by inflicting serious injuries on her vagina.
The offence contravenes the Criminal Laws of Lagos State (2015) and is punishable by life imprisonment.
Similarly, the court sentenced a security guard, Olawale Olarewaju to life imprisonment for having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl.
Justice Oshodi criticised lapses and delays in justice on the part of the Ikoyi Custodial Centre to bring the defendant, who had been in prison custody for eight years to court.
He said the case had been struck out for want of diligent prosecution by Justice Sherifat Solebo (rtd) when the custodial centre did not produce him before the court for arraignment regardless of the issuance of a production warrant between 2016 and 2019.
He said: the defendant was in Ikoyi Custodial Centre and remained there for about eight years from the day of his remand until he was produced before me on Jan. 3, 2023, for arraignment.
“The preceding demonstrates gaps in the operation of the Nigeria Correctional Service.”
While delivering the judgment, Oshodi held that the prosecution proved the ingredients of defilement with charge number LD/2359C/2016 against the defendant.
He said the survivor, (now 18 years old) testified before the court that she was 13 years old when the incident happened and that the defendant was a security guard at a construction site.
According to him, the survivor told the court that the defendant forcefully had sex with her when she went to fetch water at the site.
Oshodi said that the evidence of the survivor was corroborated with that of her father who was the prosecution witness two.
He said the survivor gave a vivid and unshaken testimony of what the defendant did to her.
The judge held that the defendant contradicted himself and made his evidence-in-chief unreliable.
He thereafter convicted him of the charge and sentenced him to life imprisonment.