Commercial sex worker to spend six years in prison for stabbing customer to death

A 27-year-old commercial sex worker and single mother, Nkechi Okafor, has been sentenced to six years imprisonment by Justice Lateefat Okunnu of the Ikeja High court.

Ms Okafor, an Imo state indigene and primary school teacher, was sentenced today after having faced trial on the 16th of March, 2012 for stabbing one of her clients, Abiodun Sarumi, leading to his untimely death. She was accused of murdering one Mr. Abiodun Sarumi on the 2nd March, 2010 by 11pm, at Nice Time Hotel, Old Ipaja Road, Lagos. She was said to have stabbed her victim with a bottle on his shoulder.

After the judge pronounced the judgment, Ms Okafor, allegedly burst into tears and pleaded with the court to have mercy on her. Her defence counsel, Mrs A. Onabolu, also pleaded on her behalf, “Nkechi is a young woman in her prime age and a first offender”

Nkechi tearfully explained that she killed the victim in self-defense. She further disclosed that she was forced into prostitution by one of her relatives after she dropped out of primary school.“I have not always been a prostitute, when I was in the village in Imo State, I had a baby girl and she is 3 years old. Things were not easy for us. We are nine in my family and I am the third child. When this aunty called Evelyn came to the village last year, she said she will take me to Lagos to work in a restaurant and that was how she forced me into prostitution.”

“She was the one who paid for the rooms we stayed and after we have slept with the customers, every night, she comes to collect the money. We charged the customers N1000 per night and we can
make up to N6000 in a day. I was even tired of the prostitution and I was planning to go back home when this incident happened. I feel pain and pity about Abbey’s death. God knows that I did not intend to kill.” She had pleaded.