Medical professional petitions Appeal Court to dismiss rape conviction

Dr. Olufemi Olaleye, the Medical Director of the Optimal Cancer Care Foundation, has requested that the Court of Appeal overturn the lower court’s decision to find him guilty of the alleged rape of a minor.

Olaleye claimed in a notice of appeal that his attorney, Dr. Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, argued that the Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court erred in relying on the evidence that the prosecution had used against him.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Olaleye was given a life sentence by the court on October 24 for allegedly defiling his wife’s niece, who was reported to be 16 years old.

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Nonetheless, he has petitioned the appeals court via his attorney, providing arguments for the allowance of his appeal.

Newsmen in Abuja were given access to a copy of the notice of appeal on Wednesday.

“The lower court erred in law when, in the absence of any direct evidence, it held that the alleged victim of the crime was a child of 16 at the time of the offence,” the medical professional is saying.

He noted that in order to bolster its claim that the purported victim of the crime was sixteen years old, the prosecution had not submitted any formal proof.

The attorney contended that in order to establish this fact, the prosecution bore the burdensome responsibility of providing the complainant’s birth certificate, which would have acted as definitive evidence of her age.

However, he claimed that during the trial, except from the witnesses’ oral testimony, neither the prosecution nor the complainant presented any written evidence regarding the purported survivor’s age.

His attorney, Pinheiro, contended that the accused victim’s evidence was rife with contradictions, refuting the submission that she was consistent in her testimony that Olaleye had sexually assaulted her.

According to Pinheiro, the purported survivor did not accuse the appellant of rape prior to her police interrogation, which took place when the events were still quite recent in her memory.

He stated that she just came forward and accused the appellant of raping her four months after the purported occurrence.

He claimed that the length of time between her statements to the police and the police’s Gender Department should have raised red flags for the court.

He further said that the appellant should not have been found guilty or sentenced to prison time based on the testimony of PW5, Dr. Akinbunmi Oyebimpe of MIRABEL.

In contrast to Oyebimpe’s findings, he claims that PW5’s investigation of the purported survivor was completed months after the alleged act was committed.