Defilement: Baba Ijesha’s former neighbours share details of his early life
Olanrewaju ‘Baba Ijesha’ Omiyinka has been making people laugh for decades, long before breaking into Nollywood. But there’s another side of him no one would have found funny. Allegations have emerged, backed with CCTV evidence and credible testimony that the actor has allegedly been preying on minors, sexually molesting at least one seven-year-old, according to complaints filed with the Nigeria Police, and narrated by the victim’s guardian.
At Eyinogun, Aimasiko, Akinosho, and other neighbouring streets in Apakun area of Oshodi, Lagos, where his acting career took shape, traders and residents could be heard discussing Baba Ijesha’s alleged crime, arrest, and potential prosecution during a visit by Neusroom to the area on Friday morning, April 30, 2021.
A statement by the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) revealed that he faces up to 14 years in jail if convicted in addition to being added to the sexual offenders list, and losing his reputation and career.
Many say even all of that would never compensate for the innocent life he’s ruined.
“How could he do that?” Former neighbours who spoke with Neusroom wondered.
Apakun, close to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport road in Lagos, is popular in Oshodi as a plank market sitting beside a canal that demarcates Oshodi from Mafoluku. The neighbourhood is a slum of sorts but big business deals happen there daily.
And Apakun is just about 90 seconds walk from the Toyota bridge where maniacal man-eater Clifford Orji used as his hideout before his arrest in 1998. The area is also less than two minutes drive from Nigeria’s busiest airport, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport.
It was here, beside the canal, that Omiyinka, popular in the neighbourhood as Lanre Otomporo, started his acting career in the late 1990s before transitioning to the world stage as Baba Ijesha.
The Police announced Omiyinka’s arrest on Thursday, April 22, 2021, over allegations that he was caught on CCTV on Monday, April 19, 2021, molesting a teenage girl who has now been identified as a foster daughter of comedian Damilola Adekoya aka Princess.
“Based on preliminary findings, the suspect started sexually assaulting the victim, 14 years, since she was seven years old. The suspect confessed to the crime and was also captured by a CCTV camera in the house of the complainant,” a police statement says.
A 2014 survey by UNICEF Nigeria revealed that one in four women reported experiencing sexual violence in childhood with approximately 70% reporting more than one incident of sexual violence. The same study found that 24.8% of women aged 18 to 24 experienced sexual abuse prior to age 18 of which 5.0% sought help, with only 3.5% receiving any services.
Earlier search by Neusroom for the complainant was futile, the police had claimed one Princess Adekola Adekanya reported the case. But several searches by Neusroom for the name returned no result until Wednesday morning when a Nigerian comedian known popularly as Princess announced in a video that she is the foster mother of the teenager.
Baba Ijesha’s alleged sexual misdeeds escalated on Wednesday, April 27, after calls championed by an actor, Yomi Fabiyi, for the release of the CCTV footage where Baba Ijesha was reportedly caught molesting the teenager.
Fabiyi’s comments enraged many Nigerians, including Nollywood actress Iyabo Ojo who described the demand as absurd and accused Fabiyi of being a rape apologist.
Omiyinka has now been seen in a new video admitting guilt and pleading for forgiveness.
In the footage shared on Instagram by Iyabo Ojo, the actor was seen pleading and admitting that he was wrong to have molested the girl.
“I know it is wrong to molest her, please forgive,” he was seen begging Princess and others in the room.
In the CCTV footage, which has now been made public, the actor could be seen kissing and fondling sensitive parts of the teenager’s body in an attempt to sexually arouse her. Princess with whom we have been in touch, is yet to grant our request for an interview.
What former neighbours say about Baba Ijesha
During a visit to Apakun, some of the traders in different shops could be heard discussing the issue.
Some of the traders and residents who spoke with Neusroom painted a disturbing portrait of the embattled actor, but none of those pictures match the latest that exposed him as an alleged sexual predator.
“I knew his downfall was going to come from his reckless love for anything under the skirts,” a carpenter Tunde (surname withheld) who claimed to have worked with Baba Ijesha over 20 years ago while the actor was a carpenter in the area, told Neusroom.
Some members of Babjeh Film Academy established by Baba Ijesha told Neusroom that being a movie star, he has a lot of women around him. Why he chose to molest a seven-year-old girl and return to the house seven years after to continue from where he stopped is the hard nut many of his former neighbours, trade colleagues, and students at his film academy are still finding hard to crack.
Residents say he was a very popular figure in the Apakun area in the late 1990s to the early 2000s. He was in his 20s when he moved to the area to work with his elder brother.
His elder brother owned a shop at No. 2 Eyinogun street, where he sold glass to furniture makers, and it was that same trade that Baba Ijesha learnt from him before becoming his own boss.
“His stepbrother had some of his younger ones around him then that he was training, but Lanre was the most popular among them,” Segun, a carpenter, says. “When his brother got another shop, he left the old shop for Lanre who continued the trade, selling glasses and making dressing mirrors for sale.”
They called him Lanre Otomporo, and many admitted that he was jovial, loved by many but he wasn’t without his devils: his love for women.
“We call him Otomporo because when he started staging drama beside the canal, he loved to play the role of a herbalist,” residents told Neusroom. “He had a theatre group and he held his rehearsals beside the canal here.”
“People like him so much in this area because he is very funny and friendly, but whenever he runs into problems, you don’t even need to ask what the problem is, you definitely know it’s with a woman. It’s either he has jilted a lady or he is accused of duping a lady he promised to marry,” says Kunle (surname withheld) who has a carpentry workshop beside Baba Ijesha’s former residence at Eyinogun street.
From his shop at Eyinogun street, Lanre Otomporo moved to an Apostolic church on Aimasiko street where he lived for some time before moving to Akinosho, a nearby street . Thereafter, residents said he moved to Adeogun street, just two streets away from Akinosho and within the same Apakun area. It was at Adeogun, off Afariogun street, that he became a popular actor. He soon moved out of Oshodi.
While recounting stories of Baba Ijesha’s days as an upcoming actor, some of the residents who spoke to Neusroom claimed he was chased out of his apartment in the church over sexual misconduct.
“Lanre has a long history of messing around with women,” Kunle says. “When he was living in the church premises, he was chased out of the church for misconduct.”
The resident evangelist at the church, who identified herself simply as Lady Evangelist Olusesi, says she has known Omiyinka for more than 20 years.
She denied allegations he was sent packing from the church, but admitted he was a man of many women and living in the church premises didn’t restrain him.
“All I know is that he was surrounded by a lot of ladies at the time he lived here, and he was always accused of jilting them,” says Olusesi who claimed to be a founding member of Baba Ijesha’s theatre group.
His former landlord at No. 2, Eyinogun street, also said Lanre is a man of good character throughout the time he spent in his house.
“He is a very responsible man,” says the septuagenarian who would not like his name mentioned.
Boldly talented in his own way as a comic actor, compere, and comedian, Omiyinka is from Ile-Ife in Osun state, but he could speak Ijesha, Egun, Ijebu, and some other local dialects common among the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria.
When he rose to fame, he returned to school to study Theatre Arts at the University of Lagos, a feat he said was made possible by the support of Princess (the foster mother of the child he allegedly molested).
He got married in July 2012 but managed to keep his wife’s identity away from public eyes.
In the formative days of his career, he was only accused of jilting ladies and obtaining money from them under the pretense of planning to marry them. None of the allegations involved sexual assault or child molestation, his former neighbours say.
But in the early 2000s, it was not the norm to report cases of sexual assault in many neighbourhoods around the country.
According to a report by the U.S National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women, the problem of confidentiality for victims, isolation, high degree of familiarity between victim and perpetrator and cultural attitudes such as a frequent distrust of outside help are some of the reasons why there are low reports of sexual assaults in rural areas.
It is not that sexual assaults are not happening in the rural areas, reports say they are underreported.
Meanwhile, The Punch newspaper, quoting a police source, had reported that Baba Ijesha may be released on Friday, April 30, 2021, because the allegations of defilement could not be proved.
“There was no case of defilement, people are just talking out of sentiment. They are not talking from the point of law. We interviewed all parties involved in the case for three hours today (Wednesday),” the newspaper quoted an unnamed police officer as saying.
In Nigeria and other parts of the world, the legal requirement to prove sexual offenses in court in order to get a conviction is not an easy one. In the end, many of these offenders go on to live respectable public lives because police always claim the evidence is hazy and insufficient to keep them behind bars.
Although this is the first time a high-profile man in the Nigerian entertainment industry would be openly accused of molesting a minor, over the years, many in the industry have been accused of rape, sex for movie roles, and other sexually related offenses. But these accusations are rarely prosecuted.
In the U.S, Harvey Weinstein, a movie producer, is one of the high-profile men brought down by the #MeToo movement. Among the dozens of women who accused him of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to abuse and rape, he was only criminally charged with sexually assaulting two women. About 60 women over five decades publicly accused award-winning American actor Bill Cosby of being a sexual predator.
When the #MeToo movement swept through the U.S in 2018, at least 920 people came forward to say that they were subjected to sexual misconduct by powerful men.
Money, power, and fame have always stood in the way of investigating allegations of sexual assaults, but they could not stop the downfall of many high-profile men indicted by the #MeToo movement in the U.S. Many Nigerians believe fame and power should also not shield perpetrators in Nigeria. This is why many Nigerians are calling for a thorough investigation into Baba Ijesha’s alleged sexual crime.
If he is charged and convicted, Omiyinka would be the first high-profile Nigerian man to be prosecuted for sexually assaulting a minor.
In 2018, the Lagos State Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court sentenced a man to 60 years imprisonment for child defilement. In 2020, a former supervisor at Chrisland School, Lagos, Adegboyega Adenekan, was also sentenced to 60 years in prison for defiling a two-year-old pupil.
In Kaduna state, the government has approved surgical castration as punishment for those convicted of raping children under the age of 14.
