The Nigeria Police Force has been accused of secretly retiring the Deputy Superintendent of Police at the Ogudu Police Station in Lagos State, Owolabi Akinlolu, who allegedly r@ped a 17-year-old girl at gun point in his office at the Ogudu Police Division before his case was brought to court on Tuesday.
It is being alleged that this was done to ensure that the suspect got the full benefits of retirement instead of his deserved dismissal from service.
Rights activists, the traumatised survivor, and her family are kicking that the suspect was given a soft landing and not allowed to face the full consequences of his crime.
The survivor’s mother, Mrs Aramide Olupona, had last year accused the police of attempting to cover up the case, while also claiming that the suspect’s wife and family were putting her under pressure to drop the charges because Akinlolu was due to retire in December.
The aggrieved family and rights activists are now suggesting that the police decided to help out one of them by delaying the investigation and prosecution till the erring officer had successfully retired from the police in December 2024.
It would be recalled that Akinlolu landed in trouble for forcefully having carnal knowledge of a teenager after pointing a gun at her head.
The teenager had been at the police station two weeks earlier to report a case of one-chance robbery, wherein her phone was stolen while returning from a trip to Ikeja, Lagos.
The police told the victim of armed robbery to return home and that they would contact them if there was any further development.
On June 29, 2024, Akinlolu called the girl to tell her that the suspect who stole her phone had been apprehended.
When the girl got their, however, the senior officer allegedly locked his office door, threatened the teenager with a gun and then had s*xual relations with her against her wish.
A source told the Punch that the DSP was not dismissed from the force, stating that the officers handling the case in Lagos argued that “it was beyond the state command’s jurisdiction since the suspect was a senior police officer.”
The source told the publication, “They transferred the case to the Force headquarters in Abuja. It was Abuja that gave them directives on the investigation. Now, they are saying the completion of the investigation did not come before December. They are claiming it came after December.”
When the suspect was arraigned before Magistrate O.O. Fagboun on Tuesday, he was ordered remanded at the Kirikiri Maximum Correctional Centre.
