The court has cleared and absolved the accused from Rivers University who was charged with rape
In Port Harcourt, a Magistrate Court has acquitted and cleared Prof. David Ogbonna, a lecturer at Rivers State University, of charges related to alleged sexual assault against a female student from the university.
Ogbonna, formerly serving as the Head of the Microbiology Department at RSU, faced allegations of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old female student within his office in June 2022.
The university lecturer was subsequently apprehended and brought to trial on charges of Sexual Assault. He was later granted bail in the amount of N2,000,000 along with stringent bail conditions.
However, after a legal battle spanning over a year, the Magistrate Court in Port Harcourt made a ruling yesterday, clearing and exonerating the accused due to a lack of substantial evidence against him.
Chief Magistrate Poromon Menenen, in the judgment, emphasized that the prosecution team had failed to establish a convincing case against the accused.
Menenen pointed out that the mobile phone that the female student claimed to have used for recording her interactions with Professor Ogbonna on the day of the alleged incident was not presented as evidence during the trial.
Additionally, the Compact Disc on which the female student purportedly transferred the recording was not submitted as an exhibit during the proceedings.
Menenen also noted that the underwear the female student claimed had semen stains following the assault had not undergone any forensic examination. Furthermore, the prosecution team did not call the Health Worker who had conducted a medical examination on the female student to testify in court.
The Magistrate highlighted that the prosecution team had failed to produce a witness named Chidinma, who the female student had asserted had left her alone with the Professor in his office after they both visited him.
Chief Magistrate Menenen upheld that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations of unlawful assault against Prof. Ogbonna, leading to the lecturer's discharge and acquittal.
Following the court's decision, G.U. Amana, the prosecuting counsel representing the Rivers State Ministry of Justice, declined to comment when approached by journalists.
However, one of Prof. Ogbonna's defense attorneys, Emma Okah, expressed that the defense team had anticipated the outcome due to the absence of evidence from the outset.
Okah expressed his belief that Prof. Ogbonna had been innocent from the beginning and would remain so.
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