30 Strokes + One-Year Jail Term For Raping Minor...

An Upper Sharia Court at Gusau in Zamfara on Monday, sentenced a 36-year-old man, Saidu Abubakar, to one-year imprisonment and 30 strokes of the cane for raping a six-year-old girl.

Delivering judgement on Monday, the Presiding Jude, Alhaji Sanusi Magami, said that Abubakar, having pleaded guilty to the offence, was convicted as charged.

Magami said the convict had been given a leeway to consider the implication of his statement of guilt but had refused to withdraw it.

The judge said the 30 strokes of cane would be administered on Abubakar publicly in addition to the imprisonment, noting that the punishment was designed to serve as a deterrent to others.

Earlier the prosecutor, Malam Hamisu Ibrahim, told the court that Abubakar, a neighbour to the family of the victim, had on May 5, 2012 lured the little girl into an uncompleted building opposite his house and raped her.

He said that on the fateful day, the girl’s father returned from work and met his daughter crying.
When prodded on what happened, the girl told her father that somebody forced her into the uncompleted structure and sexually abused her.

The prosecutor stated that virginal normality and sexual diagnostic abuse tests conducted confirmed forceful penetration into the little girl’s organ.

He told the court that Abubakar deserved severe punishment because he was convicted for a similar offence last year.