by Anike Jacobs

A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member in Ilesa, Osun state, Obafemi Kolawole, has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with whipping for rape.

On 15th September 2007 raped an Action Congress of Nigeria (now All Progressives Congress) member (Tosin Ajakaye, who was pregnant as at the time of the incident) after the 2007 gubernatorial election in Osun state.

Kolawole was charged before the State High Court sitting at Ilesa, on a two-count charge of rape and indecent assault contrary to Sections 358&360 of the Criminal Code cap 34, Vol II, Laws of Osun respectively in the case of The State Vs Obafemi Kolawole HIL\2c\2009.

On the 15th September, 2007, the convict and his cohorts, who are not police officers, came to arrest her at her house at about 7:30 pm for an unknown offence. On sighting them and knowing their antecedents in the vicinity, she took to her heels. The convict pursued, caught up with her and beat her up. Having overpowered her, he stripped her naked and raped her.

“When my cry for help became unbearable, he covered my mouth. Unfortunately, those living in the same compound with me had gone to Mosque because it was the period of the Muslim fast. Thereafter he bundled me into a waiting jeep to join two other men whom I found in the same predicament as mine,” she said.

She later explained that they were driven to the home of Ganiyu Oladiran, a PDP chieftain, and tied to a tree where the three of them were mercilessly flogged. She said Kolawole later untied her and plucked out her pubic hair, put it in her mouth to swallow with dry gin, and thereafter went ahead to insert a tin opener into her vagina and as well poured dry gin all over her body. There he raped her again.

Sola