Edo records 70 child defilement cases, fathers top offenders

The Edo State Government on Thursday said between January and July 2026, over 70 cases of defilement were recorded, with over 50 per cent of such cases perpetrated by fathers of the minors.

The state Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Eugenia Abdallah, disclosed this during the bi-monthly press conference organised by the state Ministry of Information and Strategy.

The commissioner, flanked by Kassim Afegbua, Commissioner, Ministry of Information and Strategy, and the Managing Director, Edo State Geographic Information Service, Innocent Bello, disclosed that the minors defiled by their fathers were between the ages of two and 10 years.

She said, “Mostly, 50 per cent are abused by their own fathers, with the victims ranging from two to 10 years. For instance, there is a little girl currently in our custody who was impregnated by her father. She is just 14 years old and is eight months pregnant as we speak. The case was reported to us by a neighbour.

“When we asked her about her father, she told us that she had lost her father and pleaded with us not to have him arrested. Meanwhile, she is the only person who can tell us where her father is.”

The commissioner, however, expressed the state government’s commitment to ensuring that vulnerable citizens are not merely identified but protected, adding that survivors are not merely heard but supported.

She stated, “The victims are not merely trained but provided opportunities for economic advancement; and social-protection programmes increasingly produce measurable outcomes.”

Also speaking on steps taken by the state government to protect residents of the state, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy reiterated the government’s ban on the movement of motorcycles in the Benin metropolis, adding that it’s for security reasons.

He added, “We are not pretending about it. The reason why this was done was purely for security reasons. And the kind of reports we get daily have become a security concern to us.

“People use Okada (motorcycles) to kidnap people, to commit robbery. They carry their passengers, they take them to a lonely place and dispossess them of their belongings.”

On his part, the Managing Director, EdoGIS, while giving reasons for the delay in the release of land documents to applicants, said, “What is responsible for most of the delay in land document processing is the detection of fake application documents in many cases, and that includes survey plans, tax clearance, fake ID and so on.”(Punch)