A staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria, identified as Jude Ozuogu and his wife, Ifeoma Ozuogu, has been convicted and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for child abuse.
The sentence was handed over by Justice A. C. Ogbuabor of the Enugu State High Court.
The court found the couple guilty of child abuse, in which the victim is their 10-year-old househelp, Nneoma Nnadi.
NIGERIACRIME gathered that the wife was 24-year-old in 2020, when she was arrested in 2020 alongside her husband, by personnel of the Enugu command of the Nigeria Police Force.
Neighbours alleged that the couple subjected the victim to serious torture after they alleged she caused their baby to fall to the ground at their home in Aku in the Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of the state.
Also, Ifeoma allegedly inserted pepper into Nnadi’s private part, locked her up in the toilet for refusing to wash plates.
Ozuogu used hot pressing iron, knife, nail and hammer to inflict injuries on the little girl.
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It was also established that there was no physical or internal injury suffered by the baby, the night it fell from Nnadi’s hand but the Ozuogus descended heavily on the girl over the incident by burning her skin with a hot pressing iron and also driving a nail into her head.
It took the intervention of neighbours, who heard the girl’s cry, to rescue and rush her to the hospital for treatment.
Consequently, the neighbours reported the incident to the police, which swiftly arrested her. Her husband, Jude was also arrested for being an accomplice to the crime.
Thereafter, they were arraigned before Justice A. C. Ogbuabor of State High Court 10 on three counts bordering on inflicting grievous harm, administering noxious or piousness substance and employment of a child as a domestic worker.
Delivering judgment in the suit marked No: HE/121c/2020 between the State (Plaintiff/Applicant and Jude Ozuogu and Ifeoma Ozuogu (1 & 2 Defendants), the court convicted them.
Condemning the treatment meted out to the 10-year-old girl, the court sentenced the couple to 13 years imprisonment each.
Justice Ogbuabor convicted the couple on all three counts and sentenced them accordingly. On count one – Inflicting grievous harm, the court sentenced them to three years imprisonment.
On count two – administering a noxious or poisonous substance, the court sentenced the couple to five years imprisonment and on count three – employment of a child as a domestic worker, the court sentenced the couple to five years imprisonment.
The court, however, ordered that the period the convicts had stayed in custody from the day of arrest should be discounted. “All sentences shall run concurrently,” the judge so held.