Ex-Policeman Bags Jail Term For Raping, Trafficking Teenager

A retired policeman, Ariwayo Oloyede, aka Oyinbo, has been sentenced by a Federal High Court to one-year imprisonment for human trafficking.

The ex-police officer was convicted alongside a Burkina Faso-based Nigerian, Christian Owanebi, who was handed seven years jail for the same offence by Justice Abimbola Awogboro.

Justice Awogboro sentenced them after pronouncing them guilty of three counts of conspiracy and human trafficking, preferred against them by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons.

Delivering judgment on Friday, the judge said the prosecution proved all the charges against the convicts beyond reasonable doubt.

The judge held that the submissions made by the convicts’ counsel were an afterthought.

Justice Awogboro held that the first convict, Owanebi, who had jumped bail, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on all the counts.

The judge, however, sentenced the ex-policeman, whom she said had been attending court consistently without default, to a year imprisonment on each count.

She held that the jail terms should run concurrently commencing from Friday, when the judgment was delivered.

The convicts were accused of conspiring with one another to procure a 19-year-old girl, Onyinyechi, for prostitution in Burkina Faso.

The NAPTIP prosecutor, Chinedu Akaegbu, told the court that the convicts committed the offences in November 2012.