Confirming the teacher’s arrest, the Lagos State Police spokesperson, Benjamin Hundeyin, noted that the defilement case was transferred from the FESTAC police station to the gender unit of the command in Ikeja on September 30, 2024.

He said the complainant accused the teacher, who is also the girl’s guardian at a school in Ketu-Epe area of the state, of sexually abusing her since she was 12.

According to the complaint, the teacher continued with the act until December 2023 when the girl turned 17.

“The complainant further claimed that Gbolahan forced the girl to swear an oath not to tell anyone, or else she would die.

“He also took the girl to a nurse by the name Mariam Fatolu for abortion drugs to be administered to her whenever she got pregnant,” Hundeyin stated.

Hundeyin added that the suspect had already been charged in court.

A report by The ICIR shows that in Nigeria, six out of every 10 children suffer from one or more forms of physical, sexual or emotional violence before clocking 18.

More than 70 per cent of children experience this violence repeatedly, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The ICIR reports that in 2019, the Nigerian government launched its first National Sex Offenders Register to name and shame rapists and other forms of violence against persons offenders across the country.

Some other states, including Delta, Ogun, Ekiti, Bayelsa, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Adamawa, Abia, and Kaduna, also keep a register of sex offenders.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA) has been publishing the names and pictures of sex offenders who have been convicted for their offences.

Ekiti State also keeps the register.

Although Lagos began publishing names of offenders in 2022, its register had been open since 2014.