I Regret Granting Pardon To Serial Rapist -Bala Mohammed

• “Gender-based violence has become a pandemic and in Bauchi, unfortunately, I understand through the Ministry of Justice, that we pardoned a serial rapist.

  “We must apologise to the women for doing this. It is not our wish to do that. Had it been that I was aware, he would have served his full jail term. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have appended my signature.”

The Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, has said he regretted pardoning a convicted serial rapist during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Recall that the police in the state had arrested the rapist, Yusuf Bako, for defiling a four-year-old girl inside a mosque in Bauchi.

Bako was among several others who were granted state pardon by the governor during the lockdown.

The governor, who spoke when the state Action Committee on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, led by his wife, Hajiya Aisha Mohammed, paid him an advocacy visit at the Government House late Tuesday, said,

“Gender-based violence has become a pandemic and in Bauchi, unfortunately, I understand through the Ministry of Justice, that we pardoned a serial rapist.

“We must apologise to the women for doing this. It is not our wish to do that. Had it been that I was aware, he would have served his full jail term. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have appended my signature.”

The governor, however, warned that his administration would not spare anyone found to have been involved in sexual and gender-based violence in the state, vowing that they would be made to face the full wrath of the law to serve as a deterrent to others.

Earlier, the governor’s wife advocated the establishment of a mobile court to ensure speedy trial of offenders of sexual and gender-based violence.