The police in Abuja have said
they would require a formal complaint of wrongdoing against the pentecostal
preacher, Biodun Fatoyinbo, who is accused of rape, before they could take
criminal action against him.
Police commissioner Bala Ciroma said on Saturday that the police usually require complaints from
victims or witnesses or both to proceed with rape charges.
“They should file a formal
complaint,” Mr Ciroma said. “And then the police can see how to proceed from
there.”
Mr Fatoyinbo, the founder and
senior preacher of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA), has been a subject
of public derision since Friday morning when a video interview in which a
woman, Busola Dakolo, accused him of raping her, was published online.
Mrs Dakolo, wife of musician Timi
Dakolo, told YNaija that she was only 16 when Mr Fatoyinbo came to her family
residence in Ilorin and raped her, deflowering her in the process.
“Immediately I opened the door,
he just pushed me, he did not say anything, he did not utter any word, he just
pushed me to one of the chairs in my living room,” Mrs Dakolo told YNaija.
“I saw him, he was removing his
belt, he just said: ‘keep quiet, do what I want you to do and you will be
fine,'” Mrs Dakolo said.
Mrs Dakolo said Mr Fatoyinbo told
her after the alleged rape that she should be grateful that it was a man of God
who did that to her.
She said the preacher raped her
the second time within the same week on a deserted road.
She also narrated several
unwanted sexual encounters that followed the first incident, all of which she
said she had carried as a burden for several years. She said she recently found
the confidence to publicly tell her story.
Mr Fatoyinbo pushed back against
the allegations on Friday, saying in an official church statement that he had
never raped a woman “even as an unbeliever.”
Nigerians have expressed enormous
support for the Dakolos for their courage, and calls for Mr Fatoyinbo’s arrestand prosecution have also intensified on social media.
But the police are now asking for
the victims to come forward with complaints.
It was not immediately clear
whether the Dakolos have reported the matter to the police.
Rape allegations are considered
grievous under Nigeria’s federal and state laws, and could attract long
sentences for anyone convicted.
The Child Rights Act (2003) set
18 as the age of consent at federal level, but several states have amended the
law before domesticating it, including Kwara which sets consent at 16 years.
Section 274 of the Kwara State
Child Rights Law (2007) defines a child as “any person under the age of 16.”
Before the Child Rights Act was
introduced in 2003 to protect and advance the interest of the girl child, there
was no standard definition for criminal responsibility in Nigeria. Decades
after it was first passed and adopted at the federal level, 12 states, all in
northern Nigeria, have not domesticated the law.
The states are: Bauchi, Yobe,
Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, Borno, Zamfara, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa and
Kaduna.
Even though the Kwara State Child
Rights Act sets 16 as the age of consent, prosecutors would have to put up a
formidable argument to categorise the alleged incident as a child rape because
it appeared to have taken place before 2007, according to Victor Okhai, a
criminal justice expert.
Mr Fatoyinbo said in his
statement that he was friends with Mrs Dakolo’s family (the Amupitans) in 1999
when he was an upcoming preacher in Ilorin.
Mr Okhai said rape, as with most
criminal charges, can prove particularly challenging for prosecutors to
establish in court.
“It may require the victim,
witnesses, marks and even forensic analysis nowadays,” Mr Okhai said.
However, Mrs Dakolo and other
women who have alleged sexual misconduct against Mr Fatoyinbo could initiate a
class action lawsuit against the famed preacher.
“When there is a preponderance of
allegations from women, they can file a class action civil suit to hold him
accountable for his action,” Mr Okhai said. “But this would be a civil matter,
which might not go as far as the criminal charges that people have shown a
preference for in this matter.”
Mr Okhai also said the police may
take up the matter, even without a formal complaint from the Dakolos or other
potential victims.
“If the police have a reasonable
basis to suspect that a wrongdoing might have been committed, then they can
move in without a complainant,” Mr Okhai said. “Just like in Naira Marley’s
case: nobody made a formal complaint, but the anti-graft EFCC arrested him and
charged him to caught for Internet fraud.”
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