In the gang rape case: The politics of denial and excuses

When the video hit millions of computer and cell phone screens, one thing that seemed assured was that the government would have no problem apprehending and prosecuting the offenders. The readily available evidence is overwhelming. There is a videotape that shows a girl being ravaged in a rape orgy by five men. The rapists spoke […]

When the video hit millions of computer and cell phone screens, one thing that seemed assured was that the government would have no problem apprehending and prosecuting the offenders.

The readily available evidence is overwhelming. There is a videotape that shows a girl being ravaged in a rape orgy by five men. The rapists spoke in their natural voices and local dialects of their ethnic language for the entire period of time captured in the video. The men called themselves by name. The victim, whose face was in full view, also called them by name. She begged to be spared the ordeal. She cried and even fought them. And she expressed a wish for death instead of the ordeal she was put through. She was clearly overpowered and could never be said to have consented to sex. The immediate scene of the crime was captured on the video. The full figures of the men’s bodies were captured on the video. The men revealed personal information about themselves. Example; one revealed he was a 400 level law student in Abia State University. Another indicated he had a car. Yet another indicated he was on an industrial attachment. It was also revealed that the victim was being punished for insulting one of the men. And finally, the video in its full length appeared more than one million times all over the world, and could not be said to have been lost. These make this case a prosecutor’s paradise.

But one factor, the decisive factor, seems not to have been considered: The country in question is Nigeria. In that country, leaders are nearly all unaccountable or simply incompetent. Problems abound.

First, you have a state government, which first denied that the incident occurred at all, and subsequently, it denied that it occurred within its territory. Then you have a university that denied having as students, the perpetrators or the victim, and that the incident occurred in the university premises. Of course, there is a distinct legal implication for each denial by the officials. If the incident did not occur in the university, the university officials would have no immediate responsibility for tracking and punishing the perpetrators or protecting the victim, or even future victims. In similar vein, if it did not occur in Abia State, then the State government and the Police Commissioner for that State would have no immediate responsibility. And if the incident never happened at all or it never happened in Nigeria, then the whole range of Nigerian officials and the government would have effectively declined to take any responsibility whatsoever.

Government effort towards apprehending and prosecuting the offenders is poor and riddled with incompetence, at best. The Minister of Youths, after a brief ostensible excitement and avowals of governmental actions against the perpetrators, suddenly and oddly, declared that he had consulted some lawyers, unspecified, who advised him that because the faces of the perpetrators on the videotape were blurred, it would be impossible to prosecute the case. That was an outright insult to the entire Nigerian legal system. The Minister seems to be making no sense. He was able to use the video to arrest people. How could he say that the same video did not identify anyone enough for prosecution? How did he know whom to arrest, then?

From that initial blunder to the present moment, there has not been a clear position from the Inspector General of Police or from the office of the Attorney General. Though it was reported in the media that the victim had been located by an NGO and has been taken into some kind of protective custody, the government seems to know nothing about that development.

In the press, The Nation, to be precise, the Police Commissioner for Abia State, Bala Hassan, was reported to have said that even though that Zacky and Uchenna, two of the suspects, have been arrested in connection with the case, “the evidence before [us] does not show or prove that the two committed the act….”. Hassan went further to say, “there was no evidence to show that the incident took place in Abia State University, Uturu,” adding, “it could have taken place elsewhere in the country”. And to add insult to injury, the Police Commissioner said, “the rape victim has not shown up since the incident took place”. According to the paper, the Police Commissioner said the non-appearance of the rape victim has been slowing down investigation of the matter.

One does not have to be a lawyer to understand how untenable the position of the police is. With the mountain of evidence already available, it smacks of incompetence for the police to expect “the victim to show up”. Where is she to show up? She has already shown up for over an hour on the video clip that is out there for all to view. Indeed, the suspects can be convicted 10 times over without the victim showing up. In fact, if this were a modern and responsible police force, they would be impressing upon the suspects that even if the victim was dead, the suspects would be convicted, not only of rape but also of murder. To so publicly announce that they need the victim to show up in order for the case to move forward is to indirectly suggest to the suspects that if only they could get rid of the victim, they would walk free of rape. Besides, it is the duty of the police to find the victim in a case like this.

The danger that the world should be aware of is this: if this matter is left only to Nigerian government officials, they would bungle it. A stage appears to have been set for the government to sweep this case under the carpet and to punish and torment the victim and her family all over. The outrage and the outcry that got the little attention from the government must continue. All stakeholders must hold the government of Nigeria accountable for this case. This is one crime where the public must insist on seeing that justice is done. It is true that Nigerians are routinely subjected to shocks by those who rule them, but let the shock wave from this case be one level too far. The outcry must continue and intensify.

Ugwuonye writes from the U.S. He is a practising lawyer and President of Eculaw Group.  He can be reached at [email protected]