The news from the Makurdi High Court Thursday, emerged like shock waves and leaves a sour taste in the mouth as Andrew Ogbuja, a lecturer at the Benue State Polytechnic Ugbokolo, Okpokwu Local Government Area of Benue state, was acquitted of the charge of conspiracy, rape and death of Miss Ochanya Ogbanje, a 13-year-old school girl, in 2018.
The case was presided over by Justice Augustine Ityonyiman.
However a Federal High Court in Makurdi, in a separate case, Thursday convicted the lecturer’s wife, Mrs. Felicia Ochiga-Ogbuja, for negligence in the rape of the deceased who lived with her before her demise.
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Mr. Ogbuja and his fugitive son, Victor, were allegedly fingered in the serial rape of the deceased until she took ill and died at the Federal Medical Centre in Makurdi where she received treatment for two months before her death on October 17, 2018.
The Benue State government, on October 10, 2019 had arraigned the 54-year-old Ogbuja before the Makurdi High Court on charges of criminal conspiracy and rape leading to Miss Ogbanje’s death.
Delivering judgement at the state High Court, Justice Augustine Ityonyiman held that the prosecution failed to prove its four counts against Andrew.
Justice Ityonyiman, while acquitting Andrew, held that police investigators failed to subject the defendant to medical examination in order to match his specimen with the findings in the medical reports presented before the court.
In evaluating the evidence, the judge held that two autopsy reports from the Federal Medical Centre in Makurdi and the Nigeria Police Forensic Laboratory in Lagos, left him in quandary.
Despite narrating her ordeals at the hands of the Ogbujas in a video — tendered before the court, Ityonyiman said, “it is regrettable that the deceased could not tell her story before she died.
“I hereby acquit and discharge the defendant of all the four counts charge,” the judge held.
