I once had a Domestic Violence case in which wife alleged the husband punched her with boxing gloves during a fight. She presented pictures of her battered face in court. But the Husband denied beating her & that she must have been beaten by someone else or fallen & trying to incriminate him. There is no history of DV prior to this. I believed the wife, but needed the Crown to give me the evidence to convict.

The Prosecution failed. The boxing gloves recovered from the house was misplaced by the police & No witnesses presented. So I had to let the husband go. Cases are about evidence and not morality or feral outrage.

This leads to me to the Dakolo case in Nigeria. It is possible to do the right thing in the wrong way. Both sides of the polarised Dakolo v Fatoyinbo saga are being blinded by their biases. It is the duty of the Police to investigate Both sides of any allegations. First, headline today says “Police Storm Dakolo residence”. Then the story said there were 3 officers. Can that really be said to be “Storming”? With the headline, I was expecting to read at least a dozen officers were there. Needless sensation does not build legal culpability. Secondly; folks said Fatoyinbo has not been questioned on Dokolo’s allegations. How do you know that? He could have chosen to be quiet about his own questioning.

Read more: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/07/21/on-dakolo-vs-fatoyinbo-a-legal-perspective-by-dr-omole/

I clicked the linked, read the intelligent submission to the end.
Do Nairaland a favour by posting all texts here as many are uncomfortable with visiting blogs.

Great blog you got.

Well done Dr Omole. You gave an unbiased view about the whole situation. I doubt if the alleged victim might win this case in the court of law. Like you mentioned, the alleged victim and her husband are making things difficult for themselves. The media on the other hand have been favouring one party instead of doing investigations. And even if do , they are not coming up with reasonable fact. Like you said, it would be difficult for an unbiased judge( paraphrase) to rely on mere statements from different persons claiming to be abused by the alleged rapist as such statements may be biased. The accused rarely respond to some of the allegations levelled against him. The masses ought to be smart enough to ask questions from both parties instead of been emotional very few are reasonable even on this platform. Any who objectively criticize the alleged victim is tagged a COZA member or a rape apologist. However we can't rule the fact that there are three groups on this matter.
Group 1 Are those in support of the accused out of sympathy and pass experience from false accusations
Group 2. Are those in support of the victim out of sympathy from pass experience even though there are no concrete evidence.
Group 3 Are non supporters yearning for facts before making informed decision.
As it stand the media is under Group 2. It is unprofessional of them because many of them are talking sides, you could see from their body language.
We lack investigative journalism in this country. Many Nigerian journalist rely on social media for their news reportage. Many lack expertise and skills of which I blame most media houses for this. Instead of employing professionals they employ persons that are not grounded in that field. The very few who have such skills are afraid to do their jobs