Favour Okechuku was reported to have been gang-raped to death in Ejigbo area of Lagos on 4th October 2020. Favour was an 11-year-old Junior Secondary School year 3 student who was sent on an errand by her mother at 3.00 pm of that fateful day. She was said to have been lured into a building on Olanrewaju street, where four men took turns to rape her. She was suspected to have been gaged in the process, apparently to avoid raising that alarm.  Favour’s corpse was found in a building not too far from her parent’s house on Olanrewaju street, naked, and covered in her own blood.
Favour is just one child out of many, there are many favours that have died, and many still struggling to survive this grievous assault. And it continues to happen again and again because there is still no commitment from leaders and stakeholders to punish rapist and support survivors. Hence rape and sexual violence continue unabated in our societies with so much impunity.
We cannot afford to allow this to continue to happen without making an effort to curb the tide, by ensuring stakeholders get involved in not just punishing rapist and sexual offenders, but also providing support for victims. We must not let this continue to happen. We are gaining traction and having our voice heard, but we still have a long way to go, and with your signatures, we can get there.
If you have not signed the petition yet, there is no better time to than now. Let’s do this, together we can rid our society of rape and sexual violence and save the rest of the FAVOURS.
