The controversy involving resurrected tweets purportedly associated with singer Simi has been forwarded to the Commissioner of Police for preliminary inquiry by the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency.
Lola Vivour-Adeniyi, the agency’s executive secretary, revealed this on Thursday in an interview with Channels Television, stating that the accusations could not be disregarded.
Simi’s remarks about rape on social media, including her suggestion that males should stop raping women, her suggestion that rapists should be castrated, and her assertion that “almost every woman she knows has been sexually assaulted,” sparked the controversy.
These claims sparked a lot of online discussion.
Soon after, screenshots of a number of old tweets that were thought to be dated 2012 and 2013 started making the rounds.
These included posts that seemed to be about the kids at her mother’s daycare, with comments like “I love kissing the kids at my mom’s daycare—they’re so cute and I’m crazy about them” and “Why is this 4-year-old boy trying to put his hand inside my sheet?????” Ogbeni, wash it, oh!, or something similar.
The re-release of the previous tweets caused what many called “heat” against the musician and prompted harsh condemnation from certain social media users who saw them as improper.
On her social media profile, Simi responded to the issue by stating that the previous tweets were a reflection of her early years and her experiences working at her mother’s daycare.
She insisted that the posts weren’t written “from perversion” and claimed that some had misrepresented them.
Following the spread of tweets allegedly from 2012 and 2014, Vivour-Adeniyi responded to the matter by saying the agency had been monitoring developments surrounding what some have termed “Simi Gates and Simi Darlington.”
“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 and some in 2014, 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.
She claims that a briefing was also given to the state’s safeguarding task force.
“In Lagos State, we have the task force saddled with the responsibility of implementing the safeguarding and child protection order, and that task force has been briefed on this, and preliminary investigations are ongoing,” Vivour-Adeniyi said.
She emphasized that the agency was required to start preliminary investigations, pointing out that the presence of a complaint would determine whether or not prosecution would take place.
She also asked others who were impacted to come out and make a statement.
“For the Simi case, we cannot act like we have not seen this. And so we have a duty to at least commence a preliminary investigation. Is there any survivor? Because, the truth of the matter is, 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.
