I told her that I wanted to marry her so that the spell on her family would not come upon her. I also told her that I would help to sponsor her education. She said there was no problem. I knew that if I didn’t tell her that, she would not agree to have sex with me.”
This was the confession of a 48-year-old pastor, Michael Abiodun Rabiu, who was arrested by detectives in Ogun State Police Command for not only defiling a 12-year-old girl (names withheld), but impregnating her.
The police image maker in the state, SP Abimbola Oyeyemi, who confirmed the arrest, had said that Pastor Michael, as he is fondly called, with a church at Oluwo, Owode Egba, in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area, had the girl as a choir member in his church before his act.
Nigerian Tribune learnt that the victim’s mother joined the church as a result of spiritual problem which led to the death of the daughters she had before the defiled girl.
The PPRO said that the police were informed that the mother took the girl to the suspect’s church for spiritual deliverance to prevent her from the same fate that befell her late sister.
“On the fateful day, the pastor, a father of three, asked the victim’s mother to send her to him for special prayer, but on getting there, the pastor took her into a room within the church and had carnal knowledge of her which resulted in pregnancy,” SP Oyeyemi stated.
The report was said to have made the Divisional Police Officer in charge of Owode Egba division, CSP Olasunkanmi Popoola, to send his detectives to the scene where the pastor was promptly arrested.
On interrogation, Pastor Michael, who confessed to the crime, blamed it on the devil, admitting that the girl had known no man before he had a sexual relationship with the JSS 2 student.
The mother of the victim said that she got to know about the pregnancy very late because her daughter had not started her menstrual period before, which made it difficult to know about it until she was seven months pregnant.
The state Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, had ordered the transfer of the suspect to State Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation and prosecution after its conclusion.
Read the full story in Tribune
