Every country has its moral test. For Nigeria, that test has a name and a face, Ochanya Elizabeth Ogbanje. She was just 13. A child whose only crime was finding herself in a background that romanticises the idea of “family” but fails miserably at protecting its own children.
Seven years after her death, the name Ochanya still reeks of injustice, not because her story is unknown, but because it is unforgivably familiar.
Ochanya’s ordeal should make any decent human being lose sleep. Born in Benue State, she was sent to live with her maternal uncle, Andrew Ogbuja, a lecturer at Benue State Polytechnic, after her mother’s death. There, she was meant to find safety, education, and care. Instead, she was handed over to monsters.
For five harrowing years, both Andrew and his son, Victor Ogbuja, repeatedly raped and sodomised her until her young body broke down completely. By the time she was rescued, Ochanya suffered from vesicovaginal fistula (VVF), a condition that left her leaking urine and faeces uncontrollably. She eventually died in October 2018, a victim not just of two men, but of a system that looks away too easily.
This was not a hidden crime. The abuse began in 2013, when Victor first violated her. When his sister caught him and told their father, Andrew, instead of intervening, the man joined in. Imagine that a father and son are taking turns destroying a little girl under their roof. Felicia Ogbuja, a vice principal, wife, and mother, not only to her own daughter but to countless students, allegedly knew about the abuse and did nothing.
A whole family became complicit in evil. Yet, even after Ochanya’s death, the machinery of justice crawled at the speed of decay.
The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) in Benue State took up the case in 2018, and the court process began. But what followed is a portrait of Nigeria’s judicial rot. Andrew was charged, then acquitted, because there was “insufficient evidence.” Felicia was found guilty of negligence and given a mild sentence, a slap on the wrist for a woman who watched a child die slowly under her roof.
Victor, the son, absconded and is still at large, allegedly living a free life in Lagos, even running a record label. Andrew returned to lecturing. Meanwhile, Ochanya’s grave lies quiet in Benue, her justice buried beneath dusty case files and bureaucratic indifference.
How does a system fail this completely? How do we call this civilisation? A child was raped, tortured, and left to die, yet the accused go free on technicalities. Nigeria’s courts have perfected the art of procedural injustice, the kind that buries truth under the weight of “lack of evidence,” missing witnesses, or compromised investigators. The question remains: who protects the dead when the living have failed them?
In 2025, Nigerians have reignited the call for #JusticeForOchanya. The outrage on social media is once again loud and emotional, hashtags, petitions, influencer statements. Civil groups are back on the streets. And online, Nigerians are calling out Winifred Ogbuja, now an influencer, for her silence and complicity.
Sen Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has promised to reopen the case, and while her resolve is commendable, it shouldn’t take political will to do what morality already demands.
But beyond the social media outcry lies a deeper, more damning question: How many Ochanyas are we still losing every day in silence?
The bitter truth is that Ochanya’s case is not isolated. Across Nigeria, there are thousands of children, domestic helpers, nieces, and neighbours, suffering the same fate in silence. The average Nigerian family protects its reputation more than its children.
When a girl cries out, she is told to “keep quiet before people hear.” When a boy speaks up, he’s mocked into silence. Our culture has created a fortress around abusers, hiding them behind “shame” and “who will marry a raped girl?”
In countless homes, children are being abused by relatives, guardians, teachers, and so-called men of God, and the culture of silence keeps them trapped. Families hush things up to “protect their name.” Some police officers trivialise reports. Courts drag on for years. And when justice finally comes, it’s often toothless.
It is even more tragic that Ochanya’s death hasn’t led to systemic reform. Where are the safe houses for abused children? Where are the school-based reporting systems? Where is the dedicated child protection task force in each state? Even when survivors speak, the courts delay, the police compromise, and the community shrugs. The justice system does not just fail victims, it retraumatises them.
If the system were just, Andrew and Victor Ogbuja would be behind bars. Felicia would be stripped of every public role and publicly named for her complicity. Instead, Andrew continued teaching, Victor built a new life, and the world sighed and moved on.
The call for Justice for Ochanya is more than a demand for one girl’s case to be reopened. It is a referendum on who we are as a people. Do we value our children enough to protect them, or are they merely collateral damage in our culture of silence? Because if a nation cannot defend its own children, it has already failed.
Seven years on, Ochanya’s ghost still lingers, not to haunt us, but to remind us. She reminds us that evil thrives when good people whisper. She reminds us that justice delayed is justice denied, and that the worst form of violence is indifference.
Nigeria doesn’t need another trending hashtag. It needs conviction, moral, legal, and societal. It needs to punish predators, not pity them. It needs to stop turning little girls into statistics.
For now, Justice for Ochanya remains unfinished business. But if we have any shred of conscience left as a nation, that must change, not tomorrow, not soon, but now.
