A Yoruba adage loosely translated states that whatever you do today can haunt you serveral years in the future.
This goes for Adeyemi Babatunde, a 28-year-old man, who was recently arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for an alleged offence of defiling his five-year-old biological daughter (name withheld) in September 2022.
However, the young father of two said that he had been wondering what led him to such an act which he knew was unlawful and indecent. He said that though the act made his wife to leave the family residence with their two daughters for her grandmother’s place, he never knew that it would be made public nine months after.
The police spokesman in the command, SP Abimbola Oyeyemi, who confirmed the suspect’s arrest, said it followed complaint lodged at Ijebu Imushin divisional headquarters by the mother of the victim, that her first child and daughter told her that her father laid her on the bed and inserted his manhood in her private part when she was not at home.
The mother told the police that her girl told her the shocking news when she noticed that she was complaining of pain whenever she wanted to urinate or her private part was to be washed when taking her bath.
The PPRO said that the report made the Divisional Police Officer, Ijebu Imushin division, CSP Simire Hillary, to send detectives to arrest the suspect.
“On interrogation, the suspect confessed to the commission of the crime but claimed not to know what came over him as at that time,” the police spokesman stated.
Babatunde, from Awa Ijebu, also confessed to committing the crime during an interview with the Nigerian Tribune, saying again that he couldn’t say what led him to defile his daughter.
“I’m an employee in a cocoa industry. I have two daughters aged five and two. My wife and I were friends before she got pregnant and we moved in together as a couple. The relationship between me and my wife was cordial and smooth until what I did pulled us apart and made my wife to pack out of the room we rented at Ijebu-Imushin,” he told the Nigerian Tribune.
Narrating what led to the separation and his subsequent arrest, Babatunde said: “I had issues with the police over instalment payment of missing cash to a POS business I was working with. When the business account was being reconciled, N290,000 was discovered missing from it. I was called from the kiosk I was working in and taken to Vigilante Group of Nigeria (VGN). From there, I was transferred to the police station where I was asked on how I would pay the money back to the POS business, along with other workers that were also picked.
“On September 3, 2022, I sent my wife to the police station to help me tell them that I would not be able to pay because of salary delay. My five-year-old daughter was with me at home while my wife put the younger one on her back to the police station. My daughter sat on the bed with me and was watching cartoon. I didn’t know what came over me. I told my daughter to lay on the bed, asked her to remove her underwear, after which I climbed on her.”
The suspect said that he did not penetrate his daughter’s private part but just worked himself into a frenzy until he ejaculated on her thigh. “I wiped the semen off her thigh with a piece of cloth and threw it somewhere,” he added.
Nigerian Tribune learnt that his deed was exposed by the daughter immediately her mother returned from the husband’s errand. “On my wife’s return, she said that I was asked to come to the police station myself and I went there. On my return home, I noticed that my wife was frowning. I asked her what was wrong and she said that my daughter told her that ‘my Daddy put his thing in my bum bum.’ I denied it, telling her that nothing like that happened.”
The suspect stated further that the wife did not believe him because she knew their daughter could not have said a thing like that if it had not happened. The incident, he added, made his wife to leave for her grandmother’s house with the children, as she said that staying with him might make her to commit an offence over what he did to their daughter.
“Since then, I used to go to my grandmother-in-law’s place to see the children and give whatever I had to my wife for the children’s welfare. However, since January this year, I didn’t have anything, so my wife thought it was deliberate. One day, I went to the office and on my return home, I was told that my wife had come home and threatened that if I refused to participate in caring for our children, she would show me that she is a woman. I called her and explained things to her but she insisted on me sending money to the children.
“Not long after, I got a call from a human rights body. Thinking it was about the money issue, I went there with the mind of explaining things, only to be asked about my act with my daughter. I saw that I had no choice but to open up, and I did.”
Babatunde said he was still in wonder of what could have led him to such an act with his daughter. “I used to bathe my daughters, cook for them whenever their mother was asleep and even take them to school if she was not around. And this had never happened to me before. My wife had never refused me sex. I don’t drink or smoke. I’m an orphan. I didn’t know my parents and my young sibling dried when I was three years old. I was brought up by my maternal grandmother and she died in February 2021. I only know my wife and children as my family.”
He pleaded for mercy from the government and forgiveness from his wife.
Meanwhile, the state Commissioner of Police, Olanrewaju Yomi Oladimeji, has ordered the suspect to be transferred to the Anti Human Trafficking and Child Labour section of the State Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation and prosecution.
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