4 a case on the desirability of there being corroboration of the complainant's evidence." This position has been applied in a plethora of authorities of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. See the cases of IKO v. THE STATE (2001) 14 NWLR (Pt. 732); POSU v. THE STATE (2011) LPELR-SC. 134/2010. From these authorities it is seems that though there is no statutory requirement for corroboration, yet as a matter of practice, corroboration though not essential, is almost always required before conviction. The above position is not true of our law as section 180 (2) (a) of the Evidence Act, makes it statutorily mandatory for the Court to seek for corroboration of the evidence of the prosecutrix in sexual offence cases. According to section 180 (2) of the Evidence Act; “…a court shall not in the following cases, act on uncorroborated evidence … (a) cases of rape and other sexual offences against the complainants;” The use of the mandatory ‘shall not’ in section 180 (2) (a) cited above, in my view, robs this court of any discretion. It is now common ground that in all cases where the law provides that corroboration is necessary, a conviction of an accused can only be valid when there is such corroborative evidence. That is the case where statutory corroboration is required (IKO v. THE STATE (supra)) as in the instant case. In terms of Section 179 of the Evidence Act, corroboration is any evidence that tends to confirm the evidence of the prosecutrix on any material issue. See the West African Court of Appeal Case of R v. SEKUN & Ors (1941) 7 W ACA, 10. It is also settled that the corroborating evidence must be extraneous to the evidence of the prosecutrix. See R v. WHITE HEAD (1929) I.K.B 99, 102. Since there is no evidence of an eye witness account of the alleged offence, the law allows the court to rely on circumstantial evidence to determine the guilt or otherwise of the accused person. In OGUNBAYO v. THE STATE (Supra), the Court held inter alia that in cases of this nature corroboration could be deduced from circumstantial