A 40-year-old father of 20 children who is being questioned for allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl has blamed his victim for the assault.
Muhammed Umar, who admitted that he had sex with the minor, insisted that she lured him and that she did not cry during or after the act.
Umar, who hails from Gusupan, Toungo Local Government Area of Adamawa State, told the Police: “She met me in my shop and said she wanted to buy sugar. She requested N2,000 to refund her stepmother. I dashed her N1,000, and she subsequently agreed to offer her body to me.
“She went by herself to where we met without anybody forcing her. I later followed her to the place and had sex with her.”
Adamawa State Police Command Public Relations Officer, SP Suleiman Nguroje, who provided the details to newsmen in Yola, said the suspect stressed that the minor “did not complain, not to talk of crying.”
He even claimed that the minor had been enticing him and that this time, “I couldn’t resist the temptation.”
The suspect, who had married four wives and divorced two, said he was willing to take the minor as wife if her father would agree.
On her part, the victim vehemently accused the suspect of raping her, narrating that her father sent her on an errand on that fateful day to buy sugar and that while at the shop, the suspect sent her to bring a kettle for him from the house.
“I went and didn’t see the kettle, but while I was returning, he stopped me and dragged me into a nearby room, and raped me,” she said.
She added that he held her by the neck during the act and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the incident.
“He told me that last year he had an issue with my father and were yet to come to terms,” she said.
The suspect, according to Nguroje, was apprehended by the operatives of the Adamawa State Police Command on Wednesday, October 11, after a complaint from the girl’s father.
