An Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, on Tuesday, discharged and acquitted four men charged with defiling two children.
Justice Rahman Oshodi set free Messrs Ojo Taye, John Mahason, Peter Arabo and Adenekan Adedeji. He discharged and acquitted them of a three-count charge bordering on defilement and sexual assault by penetration.
Oshodi held that prosecution failed to prove the ingredients of the charge against the defendants.
According to him, prosecution failed to bring the alleged survivors, aged five years and three years, to testify in the case. He said that he could not rely mainly on the evidence given by the medical doctor and the investigative police officer to convict the defendants.
โThe absence of the survivors in court to give their testimony has proven insufficient evidence against the defendants. It is better for nine guilty people to be set free than to convict one innocent person.
โI find the defendants not guilty of the charge and hereby acquit and discharge them,โ he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the defendants had been incarcerated for eight years following their arrest by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, on Nov. 9, 2015.
They had pleaded not guilty on arraignment. (NAN)
