An employee of ARM Pensions, Ogochukwu Odogwu, has allegedly been raped by a colleague of hers, an Executive Director (Technical) of the company, one Abisola Onigbogi.
According to information available to THISDAY, the 36-year-old lady who works at ARM Pension as a Human Resource Business Partner, had gone to a party on July 18, 2024, with a number of her colleagues.
“I would like to officially report that I was sexually assaulted i.e. I was abducted and raped by Abisola Onigbogi, ED technical at ARM Pension on the night of July 18, 2024 when we had the office party.
“Abisola Onigbogi of ARM Pension had penetrative sexual intercourse with me, without my consent. The assault was done at a certain hotel I woke up to find myself, called Limeridge hotel at Chevron drive, Lagos,” she said in a report.
In her report, she chronicled the events that led to probably one of the worst days of her life.
“On the evening of the office party just like every other staff member at the party I had food and drinks. I had mixed a small amount of Jameson whiskey and coke. This whiskey bottle was opened by Francisca Azie on the table I was seated at with other colleagues.
“However, being part of the planning committee I had to stand up from my table at intervals to coordinate the serving of food and at such times left my drink, food and other personal effects in the care of Damilola Oluyori, who is a colleague and one I am very friendly with.
“My last memory of the party was at about 7.30,8ish. However, Dami claimed that I mentioned to her that I was tipsy and could not drive. So she offered to find a way for me to go home and then approached Abisola Onigbogi to drop me off since he lived around the same axis as me,” she narrated.
Lost Memory
In her report, she stated that the last memory was still around the time she mentioned earlier. ” Along with the Jameson whiskey which was like ¼ of a plastic cup, I had one cocktail from the bar that is the last I remembered.
“I lost total memory of every conversation and activity as my last memory of the night was from 7.30pm. My entire memory was wiped out which was very unusual even for someone who might have drunk excessively which I didn’t and have quite a good alcohol tolerance from precedent”.
Piecing the Puzzle at the Hotel Room
For someone that went to party and had no plans to lodge in a hotel, it was a puzzled Odogwu that woke up on July 19, 2024, in an unknown location, on a strange bed and to cap it all, fully undressed.
“Next thing I know I wake up and realise I am in a room fully undressed. I look around and I realise it was a hotel. I find my clothes in a pile and my wig, my phone and my handbag.
“I checked the time it was around 3am and my private parts were sore and felt like someone had invaded me. I walked out of the room, looked around for a clue of the name of the hotel to even have a sense of where I was, I saw the name Limeridge hotel, I googled it and I found that it’s on chevron drive.
“ I ask the receptionist and security man to help me get a taxi so I can go home. I further checked my WhatsApp messages and I saw that Abisola the perpetrator had sent me a message that he was with my laptop bag and ID Card.
“Damilola had sent me a couple of messages that sounded frantic wanting to know if I was okay and if Abisola dropped me at home. I sent her a message to tell her that I do not understand why my memory is wiped out and it’s unusual.
“When it was morning, I tried to call Abisola twice and he didn’t pick up. I messaged him that I’d like to talk to him and shortly after he called me. When he called, I asked him how I ended up in a hotel since I was in his car as my colleagues said and he was to drop me at home.
“He said he asked me for my address and I was incoherent and so he took me to that hotel. I further asked why I was naked when I woke up and he said he didn’t know that he just dropped me and left. I later spoke to my colleagues Damilola and Odera because I needed to find my car and I was told that my car was safe in the office.
“Damilola further mentioned that she sent videos of me and her dancing at the party to Abisola as he requested her to. I have no recollection of her making any video except for some pictures we had earlier taken at the start of the party and an 11 seconds video.
“However she shared videos with me this morning of me and her dancing and another colleague was in the video. Again my memory is blanked out on this. I messaged Abisola later on Friday morning to ask how I could get my laptop bag and ID card and he said he had given the security guards in the office to put it in my car,” she added.
Personal Preliminary Investigations
Still not convinced about the explanations she got, she set off to personally investigate what happened to her at the party and after. Thus, she went back to the hotel that Friday morning after she dropped off her kids at school.
“I asked to see the CCTV footage to ascertain when he brought me there and if he really just left after dropping me. The receptionist first confirmed that he paid for the hotel room at 22.05, showed me evidence and then went ahead to show me the footage, I was seen leaning on him and he was holding my shoes and a hand on my back guiding me into the hotel and hotel room at about 15.52 and was seen leaving at 17.36.
“Now this time I am quoting is because the CCTV time in the hotel was not West African Time (WAT) but the time interval was about 1 hour 45 minutes he was in the hotel room with me. I called my family and informed them of this.”
Rape Test Confirms Suspicion
Probably hoping her suspicions were unfounded, the rape test she did same Friday shattered her hope and threw her into pain.
“I have had a rape kit test done at Island maternity on Friday. I made a formal report at the Ikoyi Police station on Saturday morning. My private part was bruised and I have been in pain.”
While stating that she had formally reported to the Head of HR, who is her immediate boss, as well as the Managing Director and another Executive Director in the report, she said her life has been disrupted badly.
“I am a single mother with two kids and my mental and physical state has been impacted by this incident and I need to take care and show up for my kids in all of this,” she stressed.
Armed with the confirmation of the assault, she went further to ask more questions. “I sent him another message that Friday morning asking why he didn’t ask Dami or any of my other colleagues for my address if truly he had the intention to drop me at my house which he had no response to.
“I did not remotely have any conversation with Abisola Onigbogi or give any consent to be involved with him in any remotely personal way. He asked me at the party to come sit with him and I refused and sat with my colleagues who I was comfortable with.
“He took me against my will, most likely spiked my drink with the help of someone or by himself and took me to a destination I didn’t know or want to be and raped me. It is beyond sad that I could not be safe at an office function and instead my whole world has been overturned.”
“I am on some very strong medication given to me at Island maternity, antibiotics and HIV post exposure prophylaxis and have requested some time from work to recuperate. I believe he is a serial rapist and I might not be the first person he would have done this too,” she explained.
Call for Justice
Although attempts to reach Odogwu proved abortive as she didn’t take her calls or respond to the message sent to her, her call for justice was as heart-wrenching as it was affirmative.
In the report made to one Opeyemi, she wrote: “I am requesting that Lagos State takes (…sic) this case up fully and this predator who has tried to ruin my life and cause me this trauma be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, he and whoever aided him.”
Arrest of Suspect and Investigation Underway
After the alleged victim made her report, the suspect was arrested by the Ikoyi Police Division where initial questioning was done, as was confirmed by the Executive Secretary of the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency, Mrs. Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi, and the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin.
While Vivour-Adeniyi declined to give further details about the case, especially as regards whether the agency ran tests, understandably to protect the survivor, she however said they were on the case.
Hundeyin on the other hand, said the case had been moved to the Gender Unit at the Lagos State Police Command headquarters in Ikeja, adding that it would be given top priority.
He however declined to state the level of investigations carried out so far and the confessional statement given by the suspect.
THISDAY however gathered that their investigations would not be limited to the allegations of rape alone, but would work to unravel possible collaborators, what drug was used to spike her drink and the role of the hotel in the act.
Attempts to reach out to the said Damilola also proved abortive as she didn’t take her calls or respond to the message sent to her for clarifications.
Limeridge Hotel Provides Clarity on ‘Safety Lapses’
The burning question was how a hotel would allow anyone bring in an ‘inebriated’ woman or ‘semi-conscious’ and didn’t think to question their moves or involve the police.
A quick search on Google had unearthed the number of the hotel which THISDAY proceeded to call. Upon revealing the reason for the call, the reporter was re-directed to the right number to call the manager.
The manager, who didn’t give her name for print, provided some clarifications to these questions, including asking the reporter to come in to watch the CCTV recording with the proper identity card.
However when asked why their hotel didn’t provide any protection for Odogwu, she clarified that when the duo came to lodge in, she walked into the hotel, although Onigbogi had his arms wrapped around her.
She said: “You can come and check the camera if she was unconscious. If someone was unconscious, we would not even allow that in the first place. It’s not possible to allow the person into the room. We can never allow such.”
Also asked why they would allow the man in question to check out and leave the woman in the hotel room without fulfilling the basic safety room of calling the woman to ensure she was okay, she alluded that the man left deceptively without the hotel knowing.
According to her, the first time the man tried to leave, the porter had asked him if he was checking out and he said he merely wanted to go to his car to get stuff and put in the fridge.
The manager said it was based on that information that the porter did not query the man again when he came downstairs the second time, because he assumed he still wanted to carry the second tranche of things from his car to the room.
The hotel only realised the man had left when the lady called them to know what happened to her and who brought her into the hotel.
ARM Reacts…
However, a top official of ARM Pension who pleaded anonymity, told THISDAY late on Tuesday night, that the company does not condole such abuse. “It is not our policy to tolerate this kind of behaviour described by one of our staff. We are cooperating with law enforcement agencies to get to the bottom of this very unfortunate incident.”
What the Law against Rape, ‘Consent’ Under Intoxication Say
Under the Criminal Code, Section 357, rape is when any person has sexual intercourse with a woman or girl, without her consent, or incorrectly obtained consent.
It further stipulated that such consent can be incorrectly obtained where it is obtained by force/threat/intimidation; by means of false and fraudulent representation as to the nature of the act; or by a person impersonating a married woman’s husband in order to have sex. Also, under the Criminal Code, sexual intercourse with underage girls or people with unsound mind (intoxication inclusive) is the offence of defilement, and so technically a person could be charged for rape and defilement.
Essentially, under the existing law, a man or woman under state of intoxication cannot give valid consent.
Chiemelie Ezeobi
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