ALLEGED RAPE: ARM Executive Director’s Accuser Not Unconscious, Says Limeridge Hotel
“Operations Manager at Limeridge Hotel, Owowumi Ewarawon, however denied that Ms Odogwu was unconscious when she arrived at the hotel with the man that brought her.
“She walked in by herself,” Ewarawon said, adding: “Please come in person with your ID to extract the facts. This is not a hospital. We can never allow anyone to enter unconsciously.”
“They came in like boyfriend and girlfriend. That’s the way I saw it. Even while entering the room, from the CCTV footage, it was as if she entered first.”
Abisola Onigbogi, ARM Pensions Executive Director, arrested on Monday 29 July over allegation of sexual assault leveled against him by Ms. Ogochukwu Odogwu, has since remained in custody of Lagos Police Command.
It would be recalled that Odogwu, 36, a human resource partner at the company in a message to one Opeyemi, which was sighted by Security Monitor, had recounted how, after ingesting hard drink at an office party on the night of 18 July, and purportedly losing her consciousness, she allegedly found herself naked in a hotel room, raped.
According to Ms Odogwu, her friend, Francisca Azie, opened the bottle of Jameson Whiskey from which she drank in a plastic cup, mixed with coke. She said she had to stand up at intervals to coordinate the serving of food as a member of the planning committee, leaving “the drink, food and other personal effects in the care of Damilola“, a colleague with whom she said she was friendly.
She added that she also drank a cocktail from the bar and had no recollection of what transpired at the party after 7.30pm.
“My entire memory was wiped out, which was very unusual even for someone who might have drunk excessively, which I didn’t and have quite a good alcohol tolerance from precedent”, she narrated.
She said: “However, Damilola claimed that I mentioned to her that I was tipsy and could not drive. So she offered to find a way for me to go home and then approached Abisola Onigbogi to drop me off since he lived around the same axis as me.”
Ms Odogwu said rather than take her to her home, Mr Onigbogi reportedly took her to Limeridge Hotel at Chevron Drive in Lekki.
She added that when she woke up around 3 a.m., she found herself naked in a hotel room with her clothes and wig in a pile.
“I walked out of the room, looked around for a clue of the name of the hotel to even have a sense of where I was, I saw the name Limeridge hotel, I googled it, and I found that it’s on Chevron drive.”
“I ask the receptionist and security man to help me get a taxi so I can go home. I further checked my WhatsApp messages and I saw that Abisola, the perpetrator, had sent me a message that he was with my laptop bag and ID Card. Damilola had sent me a couple of messages that sounded frantic wanting to know if I was okay and if Abisola dropped me at home. I sent her a message to tell her that I do not understand why my memory is wiped out and it’s unusual.”
Ms. Odogwu said when she asked Mr. Onigbogi what transpired he reportedly told her that she was incoherent and could not give her address, and so was taken to the hotel.
“He also denied knowledge of what ensued in the hotel room,” she said.
According to Ms Odogwu, she returned to the hotel the next day to view the CCTV footage, and that the receptionist showed her evidence that Mr Onigbogi paid for the hotel room at 10:05 p.m.
She said in the footage played for her, “she was seen leaning on Mr Onigbogi” and “he was holding my shoes and a hand on my back guiding me into the hotel at about 15.52 and was seen leaving at 17:36”. She added that the time on the hotel CCTV was not West African Time but that the interval during which Onigbogi was with her in the hotel room was about 1 hour 45 minutes.
She said she reported the incident to her family and had a rape kit test done at Island Maternity on Friday. “I made a formal report at the Ikoyi Police Station on Saturday morning”, she added.
“My private part was bruised and I have been in pain. I have also formally reported to the Head of HR, who is my boss with the MD and another executive director in copy.”
Owowumi Ewarawon, Operations Manager at Limeridge Hotel however denied that Ms Odogwu was unconscious when she arrived at the hotel with the man that brought her.
“She walked in by herself,” Ewarawon said, adding: “Please come in person with your ID to extract the facts. This is not a hospital. We can never allow anyone to enter unconsciously.”
She said Ms Udogwu and Mr Onigbogi went to the second floor, noting that if the front desk had suspected anything, it would have raised an alarm.
“They came in like boyfriend and girlfriend. That’s the way I saw it. Even while entering the room, from the CCTV footage, it was as if she entered first,” the operations manager said.
Bisola Onigbogi reported himself to the Gender Division, Ikeja on Monday, 29 July, at the invitation of Lagos Police Command upon which he has since detained.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ayo Onigbogi, Bisola’s brother, insists on his innocence. “It is a false accusation. I know Bisola. I am sure it is a setup. My concern now is that he should have an avenue to prove his innocence. Instead of smearing his image on social media, the police should be allowed to do their job,” he pleaded.
About Author
