Daniella has shared her story with Punchng. A neighbour had alerted child rights activists to the plight of Daniella over a suspicious bleeding she once noticed on the girl.

Her step-father, 37-year-old Francis Okezie, lives in a one-bedroomed apartment with Daniella and his own six-year-old biological daughter, a girl he had with Daniella’s mother. .

She said, “My stepdad started sleeping with me in 2014. The day he started, my mother was not around that day. She was in church during a fasting and prayer programme. .

I always told him I did not want to do that and he would leave me sometimes. Other times, he would still force me when I beg him to leave me alone. He said if I told anybody, I would die.”

According to her, her mother, an Imo State indigene, has been away from home for about nine months even though she is not separated from her husband and neither are they divorced. .

In September 2016, Daniella allegedly got pregnant. She explained that she did not know she was pregnant until her father took her to one Nurse Esther Udoh, an auxiliary nurse who also works in a hairdressing salon. .

Daniella said, “When I got to Nurse Esther’s house, he went inside while I waited outside. When they were done talking, we left. When we got home, my dad gave me three white tablets at once.

Some days after I took the tablet, blood started coming out of me. My mother asked what happened and I told her I did not know why I was bleeding. My dad was with us in the church at the time.”

The Nurse Esther and her stepdad, Okezie (both pictured), have now been arrested. The spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Olarinde Famous-Cole, who confirmed the case, said that Okezie and Esther had been charged to court.