29th August, 2022
Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
A 17 year old girl (name withheld) has accused one Salihu Kazeem, an officer with Rivers Police Command of stripping her and her friend naked and videoing them over claim that they stole his 500,000 naira.
The girl, who claim that the police officer has been using the video to blackmail and forcefully has sex with her narrated her ordeal to journalists in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State.
The teenage girl said, “It was in March this year, I was discussing with my friend about lack of Job and desperately in search of a Job. She told me that that she is going to visit her male friend that I should come with her, that may be I can talk to the man and he will be able to help me. So when I saw the man I talked with him. He asked of my age, I told him, I am 17 year old.
He told me that since I am 17 years old there are some jobs that I cannot do.That he will see what he can do and get back to me.
“After then, he asked us if we have had meals, we said no, he gave us his ATM card that we should go and get anything we want to eat, we went and bought food and came back with the ATM card and gave him his ATM card.
“So he started claiming after we gave him his ATM card that he has many debt alerts in his phone. We asked him the amount of the debit which he refused to tell us. It was just recently he told us that he has being receiving debit alert of 500,000 naira.
“So after that time, he discharged my friend that took me to his house and detained me along with another girl I met there that he gave both of us the ATM card.
“He called his boys and told them that we are thieves. They forcefully ordered us to pull off our clothes. After pulling our clothes, he recorded our nakedness. He told us that if we refused to cooperate with him, he was going to post the nude videos on the internet. He took us to a room and poured us teargas and slept with us till the next morning before discharging us.
“About one month after then, Salihu Kazeem kept coming to me and blackmailing me, demanding for sex. He has sexually assaulted me three times. Any time he visits us, and we refused to go with him, he will threaten us that he was going to share our nude videos in the Social Media. I would be forced to go with him, he will forcefully have sex with me.
“This last one he came for me,I was not around. He left a message with my friend that he wanted me to come and visit him, but I refused to go and see him.Then on Monday, when I was going to sew my slipper he met me on the road and asked me if my friend did not tell me he wanted to come and see him, I answered in affirmative. He queried why I did not come, he forcefully seized my phone and insisted I must come with him.
“That when I am ready to pay him the 500,000 that he lost in his account that I should come that is when he will give me the phone.
“Reaching today, I went to the Rumupakani (Ada George) Police station to go and lay compliant on the sexual assault. Police Officers went with me to the man’s house, but we did not see him.
“On getting home, people told me some boys came to look for me and I do not know the boys.
“My life is under threat.I don’t know if he is the one that sent the boys.I am calling on the public because my life is under threat”.
When contacted the Police Officer, Salihu Kazeem said the girl and her friend did not come back that night to return his ATM Card, but gave one of their friends to give it to him after waiting for them for several hours on that fateful day.
He claimed that he has being receiving debt alert ever since he gave the girls his ATM card even as at Saturday,August 27,2022, that he was talking to the Journalists.
He denied taking nude videos of the girls while maintaining that they stole 500,000 naira from his account.
The Police officer, however, stated that the claim by the girl that he used the nude videos he took to blackmail and forcefully have sex with her three times was not true.
He claimed that the three times they had sex they after the ATM issue was with the girl’s consent, and he paid her for all the times he had sex with her that he did not rape her.
On the issue of the phone,the Police Officer accepted seizing the girl’s phone last Monday (August 22,2022) because one of her friends allegedly used her phone to threaten him.
Meanwhile the Centre for Basic Rights Protection and Accountability Campaign has called for a thorough investigation into the incident.
A lawyer with the human rights advocacy group, Centre for Basic Rights Protection and Accountability Campaign, Festus Bonwin Esq, in an interview with ournalists advised the randy Police Officer, Salihu Kazeem to submit himself for thorough Investigation on the allegations of rape, extortion, torture and blackmail of a minor.
Mr Bonwin further called on the Police Authority to thoroughly investigate the girl and the Police officer and if any one is found culpable, the person should be charged to court.
The Rivers State Police Command had not officially reacted the incident at the time of filing this report.