A Nigerian doctor convicted of rape and sexual assault has been acquitted by the appeal court.
Femi Olaleye, a Lagos-based doctor, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by the high court on a two-count charge of defilement and sexual assault by penetration of his wife’s 16-year-old niece.
However, the Court of Appeal on Friday discharged and acquitted him.
The appellant was freed after challenging his conviction and life imprisonment sentence.
It would be recalled that Olaleye, the medical director of Optimal Cancer Care, was arraigned in 2022 by the Lagos State Government at the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, in Ikeja, Lagos.
After his conviction in August 2023, his lawyer, Kemi Pihinero, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), filed an appeal in November 2023, arguing that there was no direct evidence to confirm the alleged victim’s age.
The appellant argued that there was no direct evidence to establish the alleged victim’s age, claiming the prosecution failed to provide documentation proving she was 16 years old at the time of the offence.
Justice Olukayode Bada who read the lead judgment which was adopted by the two other justices on the panel held that the trial court erred in convicting Dr Olaleye based on “tainted” and ‘unreliable’ evidence of his estranged wife, Oluremi and the alleged survivor (names withheld).
The other members of the panel were Justice Mohammed Ibrahim Sirajo and Justice Folasade Ayodeji Ojo.
The appellate court said there were material contradictions in the evidence gathered by the prosecution which should not have been relied on by the lower court.
The court also faulted some other parts of the evidence of the prosecution during the trial, which was from a child forensic specialist, a medical doctor from the Mirabel centre and the investigating officer, which were found to be “worthless”
For the appellate court, the trial judge, Justice Rahman Oshodi also descended in the arena and interfered in the proceedings to bridge what it described as “the yawning gaps in the prosecution’s case”.
In the judgment, the court of appeal also queried why the prosecution failed to present material witnesses such as two family members who were said to have witnessed the appellants alleged confession.
The court added that a trial within trial ought to have been conducted during trial to verify the voluntariness of the appellant’s confessional statements while in police custody, especially as he said he made it under duress after he had been detained for six days.
The court of appeal determined all five issues of appeal against the prosecution and in favour of the appellant.
