The name Ochanya Ogbanje is once again a blazing hashtag on our screens. On X, on TikTok, on the furious corners of Facebook, people are rediscovering a story that should have shaken Nigeria to its core seven years ago. For those of us who remember, the renewed outrage is a painful echo of a scream we thought the world had chosen to ignore. For those hearing it for the first time, welcome to the heartbreak.
There are stories that wound you, and then there are stories that tear a hole in your understanding of the world. The story of Ochanya Ogbanje who died at 13-years-old of Vesicovaginal Fistula (VVF), a horrific condition often caused by prolonged, violent sexual trauma, is the latter.
Who is Ochanya Ogbanje?
Ochanya was just a child, the youngest of eleven, with dreams of becoming a medical doctor, sent away from home at the age of 5 years old for the simple, hopeful dream her parents had for her: an education. The local government school had shut down, and her aunt, Felicia Ogbuja, offered a way out. In the home of Felicia and her husband, Andrew Ogbuja, a lecturer at the Benue State Polytechnic, Ochanya was supposed to find a future. Instead, she found a nightmare.
It began when she was eight.
Eight years old. The age of scraped knees from too much play, mastering multiplication tables and living in lala land believing the world is fundamentally good. For Ochanya, it became the age her cousin, Victor Ogbuja, began to sexually abuse her. The assault was eventually discovered by Victor’s own sister, Winifred, who reported it to their parents.
The Ogbuja’s, Predators in the Guise of a Protectors
This was the first critical moment, the first of countless opportunities for the adults in her life to be, well…adults, who were to protect her. Instead, what happened is chillingly unbelievable. Andrew Ogbuja, Ochanya’s uncle entrusted with her care, allegedly not only learned of his son’s actions but joined in the abuse himself.
The silence from the home were Ochanya stayed was deafening. Her aunt, Felicia, the woman who should have been her fiercest protector, allegedly knew. She knew and not only did she do nothing about it, she allegedly obstructed justice, hiding the truth from Ochanya’s own parents until they were finally confronted with their daughter’s inexplicable, devastating illness:Vesicovaginal Fistula (VVF). VVF is horrific, internal injury, a tear between the bladder and the vagina, often caused by prolonged, violent sexual abuse.
VVF is the kind of physical trauma that a child’s body should never, ever have to endure. For months, as Ochanya was shuttled between hospitals, this was the physical manifestation of the secret she was forced to carry. The constant pain and leakage were her body’s desperate attempt to tell the story her voice was not yet ready to. In her last days, 13-year-old Ochanaya spent her lasts days wearing diapers because she could not hold in her urine and faeces.
When Ochanya finally found the strength to speak, to name her abusers: her cousin Victor, and her uncle Andrew, the system that should have wrapped its arms around her did something else entirely. It turned her into a spectacle. Instead of providing her with trauma care, rehabilitation, and a safe space to heal, people thrust microphones in her face. This 13-year-old girl, frail and dying, was subjected to interviews, her pain packaged for public consumption. We watched her recount the horrors, her testimony a scandal to be consumed rather than a crime to be prosecuted with fierce urgency.
And then came the final, soul-crushing failure: the Nigerian justice system.
The Nigerian Justice System Fails A Gender-Based Violence Victim, Yet Again
In 2021, the Benue State High Court acquitted Andrew Ogbuja of rape and causing Ochanya’s death. The reason? Lack of evidence. A child’s dying declaration. An autopsy report that, according to police, pointed to the truth. The lived, documented, five-year-long destruction of her body. None of it was enough.
In a move of such bitter irony it feels like a scene from a dystopian novel, on the very same day, a Federal High Court convicted Andrew Ogbuja’s wife, Felicia, for negligence. Our justice system basically said: “Yes, we acknowledge you failed to protect this child from a terrible crime.” But to the man accused of committing that crime, it said: “You did not commit a crime. You are free to go.”
And go he did. Andrew Ogbuja, at least at the time of this commentary, is reportedly still a lecturer. Still a figure of authority. Still in a position of unequal dynamics, dealing with young adults. His son, Victor, the one who started the abuse when Ochanya was just eight, is reportedly still at large. The woman convicted of negligence walks free. While Ochanya’s nuclear family live in pain of justice denied. While Ochanya stays dead.
Ochanya’s case: A Story of Compounding Betrayals
Everything about Ochanya’s case hurts because it is a story of compounding betrayals. The betrayal of family, who should have been her sanctuary. The betrayal of community, which failed to see or act. The betrayal of the media, which saw a story before it saw a child, because why even was she paraded in front of cameras? And the ultimate betrayal of a legal system that looked at the broken body of a 13-year-old girl and declared there was not enough proof.
This is why, seven years later, we are screaming her name again. The renewed calls for justice, the trending hashtags, the intense scrutiny on the Ogbuja family, is not only about this one case, but also about the terrifying realization that Ochanya is not an anomaly.
Everywhere you turn, there’s a story of a girl being violated. In her home. At her school. By someone she was taught to trust. It’s the morbid, disgusting reality of our society. We are in community with rapists, and we don’t even know it. They are our neighbours, our teachers, our uncles. They walk among us, shielded by a culture of silence and a justice system that demands an impossible burden of proof from its victims.
The anger you feel reading this is valid. The sickness in your stomach is a sign that your humanity is intact. Asking for justice is the bare minimum. But the core truth, the one that keeps us up at night, is that this should have never happened
