Sanusi Usman, a 25-year-old single man who was recently arrested in Gombe State for raping a 14-year-old girl has said he would never allow his daughters to be raped.
Blaming the devil for his crime, Usman said,
I wouldn’t accept it; I would never allow that to happen but this was devil’s work.
It was the work of the devil. I have realised the pain and emotional stress such a child undergoes and I don’t wish that for my enemy.
Usman had held the teenager, who is his neighbour in Jekadafari area of Gombe in Gombe State, hostage overnight.
Responding to questions when he was paraded, Usman said,
There is no relationship whatsoever; she is 14 years old and I’m 25 years of age. She is someone I see around the neighbourhood, playing around or running errands for her parents. In fact, she greets me very well.
It was the work of the devil; I never would have thought I would have sex with the young girl. It was the devil that pushed me into it. I regret my action.
He added that luring the girl was easy because the girl knew him and respect him as an elder.
It was not too difficult because I know her and she respects me because of my age and so on. When I saw her with a bucket of maize which she wanted to go and grind, I asked her to come inside and she did. It was then I lured her to bed; that was in the evening. It was not until the following morning that I opened the door for her to leave, to avoid suspicion and unnecessary attention.
Describing how the bubble burst, the rapist said:
You remember I told you she was on her way to grind maize. Ordinarily, that should not take her up to 30 minutes but she ended up spending hours. So her mum raised the alarm that her daughter was missing.
Some people suggested she must have been playing with other kids, but her mother went ahead to report the matter to the police and the police combed everywhere. When I allowed her to leave the following day, I forgot to give her the bucket of maize. When she got home and they interrogated her, she mentioned my name and when the officers got to my home without my knowledge, they saw the bucket that was still lying there.
They took me to their station for further interrogation.
