By Achile Danjuma
The Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency has referred the controversy surrounding resurfaced tweets allegedly linked to singer Simi to the Commissioner of Police for preliminary investigation.
The Executive Secretary of the agency, Lola Vivour-Adeniyi, disclosed this on Thursday during an interview on Channels Television, saying the agency could not ignore the allegations.
The controversy erupted after Simi made comments on social media about rape, saying that men should stop raping women, suggesting rapists should be castrated and claiming that “almost every woman she knows has been sexually assaulted.”
Those statements became widely discussed online.
Shortly after, screenshots of a series of old tweets believed to be from 2012 and 2013 began circulating.
Among them were posts appearing to reference children at her mother’s daycare, including comments such as “love to kiss d kids at my mum’s daycare – they’re super adorable and I’m crazy abt ’em” and “Why this 4yr old boy tryna put hand inside ma shet????? Ogbeni wash it oh!”, among others.
The resurfacing of the old tweets drew intense criticism from some social media users, who interpreted them as inappropriate, and generated what many described as heat against the singer.
In response, Simi addressed the matter on her social media page, explaining that the old tweets were reflections of her then youth and experiences helping at her mother’s daycare.
She maintained that the posts were not written “from perversion” and said critics had taken them out of context.
Reacting to the situation, Vivour-Adeniyi said the agency had been observing developments around what some have dubbed “Simi Gates and Simi Darlington”, following the circulation of tweets said to date back to 2012 and 2014.
“In terms of Simi, I think they are calling it Simi Gates and Simi Darlington. Some people have been asking what are institutions doing? I can speak for what Lagos State DSV is doing.
“We’ve been observing and because we had seen some tweets as far back as 2012, some 2014, and then there were talks around certain tweets being doctored and all of that,” she said.
She added that the agency decided to escalate the matter for further scrutiny.
“But what we’ve done is to actually refer the case to the Commissioner of Police to at least conduct some preliminary investigation. As you’ve said, there are also reports that this may have happened in a creche managed by her mom. And so issues of safeguarding and child protection concerns have been raised,” she stated.
According to her, the state’s safeguarding taskforce has also been briefed.
“In Lagos State, we have the taskforce saddled with the responsibility of implementing the safeguarding and child protection order and that the taskforce has been briefed on this and preliminary investigations are ongoing,” Vivour-Adeniyi said.
She stressed that the agency had a duty to commence preliminary inquiries, noting that prosecution would depend on the availability of a complainant.
She also urged anyone affected to come forwad to give their statement.
“For the Simi case, we cannot act like we have not seen this. And so we have a duty to at least commence preliminary investigation. Is there any survivor? Because the truth of the matter, it’s going to be very difficult to prosecute the lady without a survivor being present.
“A victim of whatever it is — is it sexual abuse, is it defilement, is it sexual assault by penetration and what have you — so it’s to start the process, encourage anybody who was allegedly sexually assaulted by Simi to please come forward and ensure that their statement is taken and then we know where we’re going to on the matter,” she added.