THE Coalition for Gender-Based Violence Responders (CGBVR) has accused the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Police Command of being biased in the investigation of the case of 14-year-old Keren-Happuch Akpagher, a student of Premiere Academy Lugbe, who died on June 22, 2021.
The Executive Director of Men Against Rape Foundation Lemmy Ughegbe made this disclosure during a press conference held in Utako on Monday.
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“We have been saying that the Police, in the way it is conducting this investigation, is conferring undue advantage to Premiere Academy Lugbe. There is reason for us to believe that the Police is undermining the investigation it is supposed to be carrying out,” he said.
Also present at the conference was the mother of the deceased Vivien Akpagher, who told newsmen that she had not received adequate information on the ongoing investigations, including the result of an autopsy which was recently concluded.
“There was an autopsy carried out and the result was released about three weeks back. The police have had the report since then. I have asked for it through my lawyer and he wrote to them.
“They said they can’t release it because it would jeopardise their investigations. As it stands now, the medical report and the autopsy report have not been released to me. I have not seen any one of those reports officially,” she said.
Ughegbe said a copy of the medical report obtained through ‘the back door’ attributed the death to ‘sepsis’ caused by a condom left in her uterus and that a Freedom of Information (FOI) request had been sent to the Police command demanding copies of the reports.
He also said the Deputy Commissioner of Police Fom Pam Joseph had denied the FOI request in a meeting with lawyers of the warring parties but read out a summary of the coroner’s inquest instead.
However, according to Ughegbe, a letter written by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) representing the school Adegboyega Awomolo before the meeting indicated that the result had already been released to the school by the Police.
“The content of that letter is another resounding, incontrovertible, documented evidence that the Police is undermining the investigation by giving undue advantage to Premiere Academy Lugbe, by giving them prior notice of the outcome of the autopsy report.
“I say that because in the letter dated September 3, 2021 from the chambers of A. S. Awomolo (SAN) it clearly referred to the result of the autopsy,” he said.
Excerpts of the letter shared by Ughegbe read, “there has been an autopsy carried out on the body of late Karen and no condom or semen was detected.”
He said the coalition and family of the deceased had no faith in the FCT Police Command and called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Usman Alkali Baba to transfer the case to more competent hands.
The ICIR contacted the FCT Police Command over the allegations levelled against them by the coalition.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Command Daniel Ndipraya urged the public to remain patient as the details would be revealed after the investigations.
“The Police is still investigating that case, so I urge members of the public to be calm and wait for the outcome of the investigations before taking sides. Once they are done with investigations, everything will be made known to the public,” he said.
He, however, requested more time to confirm if the autopsy result was released to Premiere Academy but did not respond to calls on that at the time of filing this report.
Keren-Happuch Akpagher was a boarding student of Premiere Academy Lugbe at the time of her death. Her mother said doctors had found a condom in her uterus, which caused sepsis and resulted in her death.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via vopara@icirnigeria.org or @ije_le on Twitter.