I was 19, not 16 - Lady exposes her family in court, says boyfriend didn’t defile her

The lady, whose name is withheld, appeared in an Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court in Nigeria to serve as a prosecution witness against her boyfriend, Victory Tasie, with whom she has a child.

However, interestingly, while being led in evidence by the state counsel, Olufunke Adegoke, the witness admitted that the suspect was her boyfriend and the father of her newborn baby. She then proceeded to say that she was 19 years old when she got pregnant and not 16 as her family and the prosecution team had claimed.

“Yes, I know the defendant. He is my boyfriend.

“I am here in this court to say that he did not rape me and he is my boyfriend.

“I was not 16 years old when I got pregnant, I was 19,” the News Agency of Nigeria quotes the nursing young mother as saying to the judge.

She went on further to claim that her family was conspiring to get her lover jailed, disclosing how her aunt’s husband was bitter because she had rejected his sexual advances and later got pregnant for another man.

“The human rights police said we should do family planning and that I should start living with Victory but my aunt's husband said no.

“My aunt's husband told me he was asking me out and I refused but I went to get pregnant for a wretched boy.

“I did not make any statement at the police station that I was raped,” the anonymous lady said.

The witness’s boyfriend, Tasie entered a not guilty plea to the allegation of defilement to which he is currently facing trial. He is accused of engaging in illicit sexual relations with the witness when she was sixteen years old.

However, the witness attested under cross-examination by defence attorney Rukayat Owolabi that she was 19 years old in 2022 and that the sexual relationship between her and the defendant was consensual.

The presiding judge, Abiola Soladoye postponed the case until December 13.