The Yaba Chief Magistrates’ Court has remanded a 24-year-old Islamic teacher, Mosediq Toheeb, for sexually assaulting a six-year-old pupil at a Quranic school.
The defendant, who was charged with two counts of sexual assault by the state police command, was remanded by the court presided over by Magistrate Patrick Nwaka.
The police prosecutor, Thomas Nurudeen, informed the court that the incident occurred at the University of Lagos Central Mosque on May 7, 2023.
That was the second time, according to Nurudeen, that the teacher had defiled the child.
The victim’s mother told the court that on the day of the incident, the child returned home from school with blood on her clothes. When asked what happened, the child told her mother that her class teacher took her to a separate classroom, tied her mouth and hands, and defiled her with a stern warning not to tell anyone.
According to the prosecutor, the committed offences are punishable under Sections 261 and 137 of the 2015 Lagos State Criminal Laws.
The charge read in part, “That you, Mosediq Toheeb, on May 7, 2023, around 4pm at UNILAG Central Mosque, in the Yaba Magisterial District, did sexually assault one six-year-old female (name withheld), who lives at No. 26, Femi Adebule Street, Fola Agoro, in the Somolu area of Lagos, by inserting your finger into her vagina and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 261 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2015.”
Nurudeen asked the court to confine the defendant for 30 days pending the Directorate of Public Prosecution’s legal opinion.
Patrick Onochie, Toheeb’s attorney, pleaded with the court to consider the defendant, whom he claimed was a senior at the University of Lagos and would begin his final exams in two weeks.
The magistrate Nwaka did not hear the defendant’s plea, but instead ordered that he be remanded.
He stated that the court lacked evidence that the defendant was a student in his final year or about to take an examination.
He ordered that the case file be duplicated and sent to the Director of Public Prosecution for legal counsel, with copies of his education records appended to the case file.
He postponed the hearing until June 19, 2023.