A Professor of Geophysics, Professor, Felix Anyaegbulam has been arrested for allegedly defiling a 13-year-old girl in the State.
According to Vanguard, the arrest of the Professor was effected by the Police after a Gender-Based Violence taskforce in the state reported the matter to the State Police boss, CP Aliyu Garba as the group alleged Police compromise and complicity in the matter.
Anyaegbulam, a Professor of Geophysics working with Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo (AE-FUNAI) Ebonyi State was said to have been sexually violating his 13 year old house help (names withheld) who hails from Ezza North local government area of Ebonyi state.
The state Gender-Based Violence (GBV) taskforce team reported the matter to Central Police State(CPS), Abakaliki and the Lecturer was arrested and immediately released.
Dissatisfied with the release of the Professor, the GBV taskforce team reported the matter again to the state Commissioner of Police, Garba Aliyu who took the matter seriously.
The leader of the team led by its state Coordinator, Mrs Faithvin Nwancho who expressed dismay on the immediate release of the suspect at the CPS, called on the Commissioner to ensure justice on the matter, adding that the Professor had once impregnated another teenager which led to her dropping out of school.
According to her: “we have about six cases of abuse which are pending in various divisions of the police force. For instance, there is a Professor at the FUNAI that has been a 13-year-old girl. The girl stays with this man but every blessed day of this girl’s life, this man violates her, he sexually violates her, that is sleeping with her. As God may have it, we were told about it and so we moved into action and the girl was rescued. A complaint was made to the police and arrested has been effected and the man to our surprise has been released, not up to an hour of that arrest which took us some logistics that led that happen.
“Our greatest dismay is that the man was quickly released, not that he was quickly released, its nit actually the point but when we remembered that the man is not even the first offender, that was how he got another girl pregnant, another child about six years ago.
“The same Professor, it happened in 2017 and the girls were dropped out of school and just six years after that, this other case is coming up on his head and quickly he was released without more. We don’t know that kind of investigation that has been carried out around that case but the information we got is that the man got home not even up to an hour he was invited to the police station”.
However, immediately after the GBV team left the office of the Commissioner, Professor Anyaegbulam was re-arrested.
The state Police spokesperson, DSP Loveth Odah confirmed the development.
Odah said, “the suspect of the alleged case of rape is in Police custody as the CP orders discreet investigation into the matter while awaiting the medical screening/report of the victim”.
Also, the Ebonyi State Chairman of HURIDE, a human rights group, comrade Sampson Oko Nweke who added that the victim was a primary 3 pupil added that “his wife who lives in Nsukka is said also to be a professor in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and most of his children are Doctoral Degree holders according to research.”
In an interview, the victims narrated in detail her ugly experiences living with the Prof. She said, ” I was living in the village with my mother. My daddy brought me to live with Prof in Abakaliki. Since June this year, the Prof has been disturbing me. He always comes into my room and be doing what I don’t like. One day around 2 a.m, I ran to my father at the security house and told him that Prof was pressing my breast. My father told me to go back that he will talk with him in the morning.
“Sometimes, I will wake up and see myself naked. The other day, somebody was touching me at midnight, I woke up, put on the light and saw Prof lying on my bed naked. He tried to touch me but I slapped him and pushed him out of my room. I was crying. One day, I woke up and my bed was soaked with blood.
“I didn’t know what happened. I told my father in the morning but he didn’t do anything. He used to tell me that if I leave Prof’s house, who will pay my school fees? That is how the Prof has continued to disturb me until I told my aunty in the school because I don’t like that nonsense Prof is doing”.“
According to the victim’s father: “I am shocked and disappointed. I am the gateman in the compound where the Prof lives. My daughter has been complaining to me about what Prof is doing to her and I have always told Prof that what he is doing is not good. “This professor did the same same thing to my wife’s kid sister who I brought to live with him as a house help in 2017.
“But we didn’t know that prof was having sex with the girl and later got her pregnant. That time, she was 17years and was in class five in secondary school but when the professor impregnated her, she dropped out of school. That time, Human rights people came into the matter and called the police but Prof quickly went to the girl’s village with wine, wrapper and money and deceived them that he wanted to marry her.
“The mother of the girl came to the police with Prof and helped him destroy the case. But after a while, she gave birth to her baby, the Prof collected the baby and sent the girl away”. The baby boy is still living with Prof now but that girl is hawking groundnuts in Abakaliki. It was when there was nobody to take care of the little child in Prof’s house that I went to the village and brought my little daughter to come and look after the child. That is how Prof started sleeping with her. A small girl like this” the man sobbed.
When the suspect was interrogated, he was visibly shaky and apprehensive, as he initially denied all allegations against him but later admitted, albeit reluctantly and incoherently. He, at the same time, pleaded for peace and blamed everything on Satan.
