By Oluwatosin Maliki
A 20-year-old ex-convict, Azeez Tajudeen, has been remanded by the Yaba Magistrate’s Court on Friday for allegedly raping a six-year-old girl (name withheld) to death in the Ayobo area of Lagos State.
Quest Times gathered that during the court proceeding, Tajudeen lured the 6-year-old girl with biscuits to an uncompleted building in the area, where he removed her clothes, and sexually assaulted her four times, while he covered her mouth with his hands until she passed out due to pain and suffocation.
The police prosecutor, Chekwube Okeh, stated that the defendant, who did not know what to do when he found out that the girl was no longer breathing, left her corpse there naked and disappeared.
Meanwhile, Okeh said in court that the defendant committed the crime on September 9, 2023, around 4 pm, at Moricas Street, in the Ayobo area of Lagos State.
Also, the police stated that the mother of the deceased, on the day of the incident, had returned from her hawking business and could not find her daughter. Immediately, she raised alarm about her missing child and people joined her in the search for the girl.
Afterwards, it was learned that someone reported that the girl was last seen with Tajudeen, who worked as a carpenter and used to come to her house to fix stools for her.
The mother who reported to the police said that when Tajudeen was called and questioned, initially he denied knowing the girl’s whereabouts, but after further interrogation, he later confessed to having carried her to an uncompleted building after buying her biscuits.
He also said, “I slept with her three to four times and she fainted. I did not know that she would die, so I left her there and ran away.”
Consequently, he was arrested by the Ayobo police officers whom he led to the uncompleted building where the girl’s corpse was recovered naked with her clothes scattered on the floor.
While in court, the apprentice carpenter, Tajudeen, confessed that he had planned to sleep with the child but did not plan to kill her.
He further stated in court that he was an ex-convict, who got out of custody in August 2023.
The prosecutor, Okeh, noted that the offence contravenes Section 222 and is punishable under Section 223 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, Nigeria, 2015.
The statement read, “That you, Azeez Tajudeen, on September 9, 2023, around 4 pm at Ayobo, Lagos State, in the Lagos Magisterial District did unlawfully defile and kill one (name withheld) aged eight years old and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 222 and punishable under Section 223 of the Criminal Law State, 2015.” However, the defendant’s plea was not taken in court.
Hence, the magistrate, Balogun, ordered that Tajudeen be remanded immediately to prison custody, ordering that the case file be duplicated and sent to the DPP for legal advice.
Balogun adjourned the case till January 22, 2024, for legal advice from the DPP.