Lagos teacher jailed for life for being a “pathological liar … everything a teacher should not be”
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Anthony Okeh, 35, a music teacher and counsellor at Lachez O International School in Lagos, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for defiling a nine-year-old Junior Secondary School (JSS) 1 student (name withheld).
Judge Abiola Soladoye of the Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court held that the prosecution discharged the burden of proof of defilement against Okeh, whom she described a “pathological liar … everything a teacher should not be.”
She also called him “a soulless man without any iota of shame” for having unlawful sexual intercourse with his pupil.
Soladoye said the case was direct evidence as the victim was in court to narrate her sexual ordeals in the hands of her music teacher, a sexual predator.
According to her, the evidence of the victim was lucid, cogent, unequivocal and compelling and the denial of the convict did not hold water.
“To the mind of this court, the denial of the defendant is a form to distance himself from the crime. The convict is a pathological liar whose evidence is an afterthought and I do not believe him at all,” the Judge said.
“I do not believe the other three defence witnesses as well because their evidence is devoid of truth and they are tainted witnesses.
“Cases are not won on the number of witnesses presented to testify before the court but on the quality of evidence adduced that is credible, convincing and compelling.”
The court held that the victim in her testimony narrated how the convict called her upstairs into the music room, where he showed her different nude pictures, claimed to be a cultist, and threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone of the assaults.
“The survivor recognised the man in the box as her music teacher who defiled her more than two times in the music room.
“The testimony of the investigative police officer [IPO] was corroborated by the testimony of the survivor when she said that the mother of the girl noticed her reluctance to go to school and she later confessed to her mother what the convict had been doing to her.
“The IPO said that the mother of the survivor (nominal complainant) reported the case to the police. Statement of the nominal complainant was admitted into evidence.”
The court convicted Okeh of the one-count charge of defilement, sentenced him to life imprisonment ,and ordered that his name be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The judge advised school proprietors to recruit those with high moral standards to teach in their schools to avoid a dent in their institutions.
“Furthermore, all stakeholders in the administration of criminal justice must form a strong collaboration in combating sexual violence offences to protect the dignity, mental health, physical and psychological trauma of survivors in such cases,” Soladoye said.
During trial, state counsel Abimbola Abolade presented two witnesses; the survivor and an IPO, while the defence called four witnesses.
Abolade told the court that the convict committed the offence on 6 September 2022 at Lachez O International School, Agege, Lagos.
The prosecution argued that the convict had unlawful sexual intercourse with the minor by penetrating her vagina with his penis, an offence that contravenes Section 137 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.
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