Nigeria Newspapers Online

Owolabi Akinlolu, the policeman who allegedly raped a 17-year-old resident of Lagos state in his office, has been remanded in prison custody.

 Akinlolu, an officer attached at the Ogudu Police Station in Lagos, had promised to help the teenager retrieve her phone, which was stolen by ‘one chance’ robbers.

The suspect was said to have overheard the victim recounting her ordeal to her mother at her shop and offered to help track the phone.

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“On June 29, officer Owolabi called my mum on her phone and told her he had arrested the person with my phone and my mum should send me to his police station and I went there. On getting there, I was told they made a mistake with the tracking, and that the person caught wasn’t the one with my phone,” the teenager said while narrating her ordeal to PUNCH.

“The officer sent his personal assistant to call me into his office and he showed me directions there. When I entered his office and greeted him, he replied and got up to lock the door and put the key in his pocket. I shouted, ‘Sir, why did you lock the door?’

“He started trying to pull my clothes off and I shouted, then he brought out a gun, cocked it, and threatened to shoot me if I shouted. Then he began harassing me and when I struggled with him he hit me on the back of my head with the gun and raped me.

“I saw his phone ringing and the caller was my mum, but he told me since I didn’t have a phone with me, I should tell her I didn’t get to his office and from now on I should be reporting at his office by 12 pm every day during school break or while returning from school that he had been watching me for two years and now I just fell into his trap.”

In July 2024, Mrs Aramide Olupona, mother of the victim, however, accused the police of trying to cover up the allegation.

“The suspect’s wife and the rest of his family have come to my shop to plead with me saying he would soon retire, but what about my daughter that was raped? Is it because I am a poor woman?”

At the Magistrate Court 11 on Tuesday, the prosecution counsel urged the court to remand the defendant.

The prosecution counsel, backed by a seven-paragraph affidavit, stated that the offence of defilement violates Section 137 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

Responding to the request, Magistrate O.O. Fagboun ordered the defendant’s remand at the Maximum Correctional Centre Kirikiri.

The Magistrate adjourned the case until March 11, 2025, for trial and further proceedings.