An Ado-Ekiti High Court has sentenced Enoch Gbinyiam, a pastor at Winners Chapel Church in Omuo-Ekiti, to life imprisonment for raping a minor within the church premises.

Presiding Judge Hon. Justice O.I.O Ogunyemi found that the prosecution had convincingly proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt, leading to Gbinyiam’s conviction.

The judge ruled that Gbinyiam’s actions breached Section 2 of the Gender-Based Violence (Prohibition) Law, 2019, warranting a life sentence at a Correctional Centre.

The State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Julius Ajiba, revealed that Gbinyiam assaulted the daughter of a church member who often visited the vicarage to help with household chores and tutor the pastor’s children.

According to Ajiba, during one of her visits, the victim was given a sedated bottle of Fanta.

She lost consciousness after consuming the drink and later awoke to find herself bleeding profusely.

Gbinyiam was arrested immediately after the incident and brought to trial. The prosecution called four witnesses and presented two exhibits to build their case.

Despite Gbinyiam’s defense, presented by his counsel Adeyinka Opaleke, claiming innocence and producing one witness, the court found him guilty.

A Lagos based businessman, Mohammed Abdullahi, is lamenting that operatives of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) have been lethargic or rather cooperating with instead of apprehending the robbers, who raided the Awoyaya community, in the Ibeju Lekki sometime in 2022.

According to Abdullahi, the gang violently robbed him and his neighbours at their residence and he lost his car, money and valuables worth N21m when armed criminals.

The realtor, has taken to microblogging site, X to lament that men of the Zone 2 Command and Lagos State Police Command have been rather lackadaisical in tracking down the undesirable elements, despite being provided with overwhelming evidence, including video clips.

In one of the posts, Abdullahi said, “Please Nigerians, help me share this video. these are the guys that robbed me and the police are not ready to do anything about my case.”

According to The PUNCH, the realtor disclosed that he was at home with his friend, Juliet, when three of the five robbers who invaded their building broke down the door of his flat, gained entry into his parlour and room and robbed him and his guest of their valuables at gunpoint.

During the operation around 1 am, the businessman said the armed robbers used a gun to strike his head, adding that after robbing him and other neighbours in the building housing 20 units of flats, the robbers, whose faces were said to be visible during the robbery, locked them up in the toilets and fled.

Abdullahi said, “They were five in number but only three entered my apartment while the remaining were outside monitoring. They were armed with guns and knives. While in my flat, one of them cocked the gun and demanded my car key, which I gave him.

“They also searched my house and saw a bag containing my passport with a valid visa, driving licence, and dollars that I wanted to use to purchase goods for my real estate business as I was to travel to Turkey in January 2023.

“They also stole my clothes, shoes, laptop, token, ATM card, gold, phone and some other documents for my business. They broke the door of my flat and gained entry, proceeded to my room and knocked down the door. The building is a combination of 20-unit flats and the armed robbers robbed nine residents, including me, on that day.”

During the operation, Abdullahi recalled that one of his neighbours informed the landlady, who in turn notified the police in Area J Command.

He decried that despite their intervention, no meaningful progress had been made to track down the suspects.

He said, “The armed robbers operated from 1 am to 3 am, locked all of us who were robbed inside the toilet or kitchen and left. It was after they left that the police came and opened the toilet and kitchen doors to set us free. We were later invited to the police station where we wrote statements.

“When we got home, we realised that some of the suspects were using some of the stolen phones to access the UBER app on one of the phones to book a ride and snap pictures using the Snapchat handle of one of my neighbours. They had access to the phone because when they stole it, they collected the password to unlock it and we monitored the social media handle using another phone.

“The suspects even wore one of my neighbour’s stolen wristwatches and snapped pictures with it. We recognised them because when they robbed us, they did not wear any masks. We took all that evidence to the policemen at Area J and we also paid N90,000 to track the location of the stolen phones.”

According to Abdullahi, they did the tracking and showed us some locations but we didn’t get anything concrete. One of the policemen even demanded N30,000 from me to give someone at Alausa to help me flag my car and didn’t do anything despite paying him.

He added that he was the one who later went to flag the car and to date, he still receives alerts whenever his vehicle was charged for a traffic offence, among others.

Abdullahi said, “I later visited the command headquarters in Ikeja to lodge another complaint and spoke with one CSP Abdulfatai, gave him all the evidence and pictures of the suspects and he promised to arrest them. He called one of his team leaders, Seun, and told me to meet him to write statements.

“Seun demanded N50,000 for the case and I gave him. A month after paying him, I called Seun and he said there was an election and he wouldn’t be able to do anything. After the election, I called CSP Abdulfatai, he said he had retired.

“I called Seun but got nothing meaningful from him. I demanded my money and he returned it. I later went to the Zone 2 Command, met the AIG, wrote a petition and he assigned my case to a team leader. The team leader, after assessing my case, said they didn’t have the server to track the suspects.”

Abdullahi said the team lead introduced him to someone who demanded N500,000 to handle the case, adding that he paid the person N150,000 but he later returned N70,000, showed him some paperwork and said he couldn’t continue the job.

“It weakened me; despite all the evidence submitted, the police kept demanding money without doing any solid investigation. Last month, I still even received an autoreg and traffic offence alert for my stolen vehicle because I had flagged it.

“The police frustrated the case. They didn’t do anything to track down the suspects; they just kept collecting money and only showed paperwork and nothing more. The police treated me badly.

“The valuables I lost during the robbery were worth around N21m. The incident happened on December 25, 2022, and I still have the pictures of some of the suspects. I have made several reports at the police stations and nothing was done,” he added.

There’s an ongoing imbroglio between residents of the Gbagada Phase 11 Resident’s Association and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) over accusations of brutality and incessant harassment.

Consequently, the residents have petitioned the Chairman, NDLEA, Buba Marwa, alleging that officials of the agency were riding on the location of their office within the estate to indulge in unruly behavior and brutalise them.

President and Vice President of the Association, Manso Odusanya, and Adebiyi Mabadeje, in a petition to Marwa, dated May 6, 2024, alleged that the NDLEA officials had been in the habit of harassing young ladies and causing trouble at the estate’s gates.

In the petition, they chronicled their relationship with the NDLEA, including how they objected to the siting the Lagos State Command of the agency within the estate, and how it was resolved with assurances from the then Chairman that stay would be temporary and conduct professional.

The petition read in part, “About two years ago, we noticed some unusual movements and developments going on in a property within the estate. The developer was invited for discussion and we came to understand that the NDLEA is the project owner and they were moving their state command to the estate.

“The association protested immediately and wrote protest letters to the government agency in charge of physical planning, which came into the estate to stop the construction of the cell, this area being strictly residential.

“The press came into the estate to investigate this and their findings were publicised. This resulted in a series of meetings between the association and the officials of the agency, including a meeting with the agency’s chairman in their office within the estate.

“The chairman promised that our objection was noted and that their stay would be temporary while they would do all within themselves to ensure their staff and operatives respect the rules of the estate and avoid frictions that may cause embarrassment.”

They residents are now lamenting that in spite of the assurances, the estate had been distressed by security breaches with attendant bodily harm to members of the community and its security staff.

“The estate invested in its private security team that is responsible for maintaining security and order. On many occasions, the NDLEA operatives have brutalised our team members just because they insist they must stay within the rules.

“In one instance, one of our security operatives was brutalised and on another occasion, our security gate was broken by the NDLEA operatives just because they wanted to force themselves in at odd hours. It is significant to note that in all instances, the officers involved were drunk, therefore acting under the influence of alcohol.

“We received complaints from our members of instances where their staff or even members of their families were harassed or approached by the NDLEA officials while walking around the estate. Many of our streets now witness indiscriminate parking resulting from activities of the NDLEA officials and their visitors who troop into the estate, at times in search of their detained relatives.”

The association also complained about the NDLEA official’s attitude to waste management, and expressed worry that it might endanger the health of residents in the estate.

It decried the unprofessional conduct of officials of the agency, including drunkenness and flagrant abuse of laid down security procedures in the estate.

“The presence of the NDLEA in an estate like ours, which is supposed to be residential, has compromised the security of our estate in many ways and made it more challenging for us to screen visitors coming into our estate, particularly at odd hours.

“We have regularly received complaints from those residing around the NDLEA office about the traumatising effects of the sound emanating from the NDLEA office when they are carrying out their usual military exercise and at times guns were shot as part of the exercise.

“In view of the above-stated facts, we are using this medium to request that the NDLEA office be relocated out of our estate so that the peace normally associated with our estate can be restored,” it stated.

On his part, the NDLEA’s spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, affirmed that the issues raised were being jointly looked into to address them.

He added, “Indeed, a meeting was held just earlier today between a delegation from the estate and our team, meaning we’re responsive. Our presence in the community has largely enhanced the security of the neighbourhood, as was obvious during instances when there had been attempts to breach the security of the estate, especially during the last general elections.

“So, if there are areas of concern, we’re working with those concerned to address them and I can assure them that concrete actions are being taken as already directed by the leadership of the agency from Abuja.”