At the end of June 2019, #MeToo became #ChurchToo in Nigeria.

BUSOLA Dakolo, a mother of three who grew up a gifted child was the unlikely heroine in this script. She first laid bare her claims in an interview with Chude Jideonwo, lawyer and co-founder of the digital platform, YNaija. These claims later became the basis for her civil claim filed at the Abuja High Court on 6 September 2019, detailing harrowing allegations of rape perpetrated against her by Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo, best known as the Senior Pastor of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA). The acts took place on 23 and 26 September 2002.

To be clear, this was not the first time allegations of sexual predation had been made against this Pastor. Mrs. Dakolo’s allegations, however, felt different. They were detailed; as a married mother, she had very little to gain from making these allegations public and an awful blowback was both predictable and to be expected from partisans and propagandists of the alleged perpetrator.

The first incident of sexual assault allegedly took place when she was 17 in her parents’ house in Ilorin, Kwara State. Neither parent was at home and the Pastor knew this. She had never experienced sexual intimacy before then. She looked up to the Pastor as her “Spiritual Father”. The facts would suggest that the alleged perpetrator probably groomed her for this moment. After the sexual act, he reportedly gave her a bottle of “Krest”, a lemonade-flavoured soda and forced her to drink it. There was a second incident which reportedly took place in or on a car. As a young Christian girl from a polygamous home, Busola Amupitan, as she was when these sexual assaults reportedly took place, initially was unable to confide in anyone about these crimes.

Expectedly, these allegations set off a firestorm across Nigeria and beyond. The alleged perpetrator initially issued a statement offering a general denial of the allegations and threatening both civil and criminal proceedings. For the first time, Pastor Fatoyinbo found himself issuing a public response to such allegations. In the past, he had not dignified similar allegations with an acknowledgment. Pastor Fatoyinbo’s threat of criminal proceedings sounded like bluster. He did not have a plausible path to criminal proceedings against her.

In the end, Mrs. Dakolo sued before the civil courts. A mere nine weeks after her case was filed, Justice A.O. Musa, sitting on the outskirts of Abuja in Bwari, delivered a ruling on the outskirts of the jurisprudential season, holding on 14 November that it was statute-barred. Under the applicable laws, he ruled, such cases must be filed not later than 75 months (six years and three months) after the act complained of. Having dismissed Mrs. Dakolo’s action, the judge then added: “…what we are now left with in this suit is sentiment. This suit is soaked in emotions and ferried into this court by the claimant riding on the thick clouds of bourgeoning sentiments”, claiming that it will “occasion grave miscarriage of justice” to ask the pastor to answer to these claims after 16 years.

This ruling raises many questions about the state of both law and procedure concerning sexual assaults in Nigeria, especially, one reported so many years after it happened. As the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, it is important to return to these.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/11/26/in-praise-of-the-soft-vengeance-busola-dakolo-by-chidi-odinkalu/