Five suspects have been arrested by the Niger State Police Command for being in possession of a human skull.
The suspects were said to have confessed during interrogation that they dug out the three-year-old corpse of one Ndako Daniyan from a burial ground in Sakpe Village, Edati Local Government Area, Niger State.
The suspects include 26-year-old Isah Mohammed, 28-year-old Idris Mohammed, 18-year-old Ibrahim Jiya, 22-year-old Suleiman Usman and 24-year-old Abdullahi Usman.
Isah and Abdullahi were said to have confessed during interrogation that they met Alfa Suleiman, an Islamic cleric from Kwara State in their quest to get rich quickly, and he told them to get a human skull which would be used for money rituals.
The duo said that they were directed to take the skull to someone around Kpakungun area in Minna with N30,000 but were on their way when they were apprehended by the police.
Isah said: “We went to the burial ground in Sakpe village and dug up the body. From what we saw, the person had been dead for three years and he was from Sakpe village.
“The reason why we did this is because we want to be rich. It is not easy living in Nigeria.
“Life is hard and we want to be rich so that we will leave this poverty and life of hardship.”
The Niger State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Abiodun Wasiu, said Isah Mohammed and Idris Mohammed were arrested on the 11th of September by operatives of a sister security agency who were on routine patrol at the toll-gate along Bida-Minna Road.
He said that the suspects were intercepted in a Mitsubishi Lancer vehicle, adding that the skull was discovered wrapped in a Bagco bag in the course of searching the passengers.
Abiodun said that during interrogation, the suspects said three other people helped in digging out the grave where the skull was exhumed, and that led to the arrest of three other people.
The PPRO said the five suspects had been transferred to SCID Minna for discreet investigation and diligent prosecution as the case was under investigation.
The family of one Remilekun Toyosi Meshioye, a lady who boarded EgyptAir on Monday through Murtala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA) Lagos but died travelling to London, has demanded that the corpse of their daughter be released to them by the airline.
The lady was said to have left Nigeria for London on board Egypt Air on Monday through MMIA Lagos but unfortunately, the lady was said to have died on board, her corpse was, however, deposited in Cairo Egypt by the airline.
The family had issued a statement saying the airline didn’t inform them, but rather they got a message from the consular office in Cairo informing them of the death of their daughter on board the flight.
The family has also demanded that they need to know what exactly happened and how to get her corpse back to Nigeria.
Olufunmilola Olaniyi-Alabi, the elder sister of the deceased who spoke on behalf of the family, in a statement said her sister Remilekun Toyosi Meshioye “left Lagos for the UK on Monday at 14:00 via Egyptair line and eventually died between her transit from Lagos to Cairo according to the little information we got.”
Olaniyi-Alabi said they called EgyptAir customer care and all other contact phone details on their website but no response all through Wednesday and when the phone was picked they quickly cut it.
“It was only once that a man picked up the call that we put through to EgyptAir Region Office in London and he said the London office is not aware of what happened and they don’t have information to share with us.
“So we were left with no choice but to report to the UK Police Department on Wednesday and they later confirmed to us that our sister was not in the UK. They advised us to contact Cairo or Lagos airports. We contacted the agent who sold the ticket to her and the agent sent us proof that she did not board the plane going to Heathrow from Cairo,” she explained.
She disclosed that it was at this point that they intensified their efforts as regards trying to get in touch with Egypt Air.
“Myself (elder sister to Remilekun) and my husband reside in Leeds, UK later travelled to London (Heathrow) on Wednesday night to get to London on Thursday morning and we demanded to see the EgyptAir regional manager in their London office who made some calls on Thursday afternoon in her office to their Cairo office.
“She later informed us that Remi fell sick in the plane and on landing in Cairo they rushed her to the hospital in town where she later died. The effort to obtain more information from her was not quite successful as to how she died. She said the Nigerian Embassy has been informed and they are the ones that should have contacted us. She later called the Nigeria consular (Saliu Agraza).
“I strongly feel that EgyptAir should have contacted us as the passenger’s next of kin against us struggling to get information which as at this time that I am writing, they are yet to provide to us.
“We spoke to the Nigerian Embassy in the person of Saliu Agraza who responded that EgyptAir only informed them on Tuesday that Remi is dead and handed over her body to them but did not have any other information or any contact of her relatives.
“EygptAir further said that only the Nigerian Embassy in the person of Saliu as a Nigerian Consular will be able to write and demand for what happened on the plane and at the airport to Remilekun and request for all her belongings and documents that they have in their possession, including the CCTV footage in the plane and at the airport,”Olaniyi-Alabi said.
She stated that she is of the opinion that Egypt Air is hiding some truth as to what happened to her sister in the plane and on landing at the airport on Monday night and does not want to take responsibility for what happened to her.
“As a family of Remilekun, we are demanding for her body to be returned back to Nigeria by EgyptAir at their own expense and they should return all her luggage back to Lagos where she boarded the plane on Monday 4th of Sept,” she added.
A statement sent by Egypt Air in Lagos stated that the passengers’ route was
Lagos London via CAI on the 4th September.
According to the airline, “When the passenger arrived at the transit area, she reported she was sick. The airport quarantine department was called to check her and decided she needed to be hospitalised.
“The airport authorities cleared and stamped her into the country and transferred her to the hospital. The Nigerian Embassy in Cairo was contacted (Tarek from public relations department) and was informed about the case
“More information and the following procedures to bring the body back need to be through the Nigerian Embassy in Cairo,” the airline stated.
The deceased was said to have gone to her boyfriend’s house to spend the night when she was stabbed with a knife on her right upper breast.
Witnesses said the victim was stabbed at about 11pm after she accused her boyfriend of having affairs with other girls
The boyfriend reportedly dumped her body by the road side after killing her to cover his deeds.
He was said to have fled when his father called in the police.
Police sources said the suspect is currently in custody at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID).
The police source said the suspect confessed that he murdered his lover and dumped her body on the street to cover his evil deed after an argument ensued between them at night.
Shaba told the police that he killed his girlfriend with a knife which she used to peel some oranges they took that night.
Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Chidi Nwabuzor, said it was a case of murder and the suspect would soon be arraigned in court.
An Igbosere High Court Tuesday discharged a labourer, Mohammed Saidu, who aided the concealment of a corpse.
Saidu pleaded guilty to a one-count charge of aiding the escape of his co-worker, Emmanuel Udoh, by disposing of the body of one Mukaila Oluseye, who Udoh allegedly beat to death.
The charge was filed before Justice Sedoten Ogunsanya by Mr K. O. Gbamgbose on behalf of the Lagos State Government.
According to the prosecutors, the offences contravened Section 415 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015, which prescribes a two-year jail term for an accessory after the fact.
But Justice Sedoten Ogunsanya did not sentence Saidu.
Last Tuesday (February 20) Udoh and Saidu were brought before the judge on a two-count charge of manslaughter contrary to Section 299 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015 and accessory after the fact.
Bamgbose told the court that the duo committed the alleged offence at about 2pm on February 5, 2016, at Ijaye Road, Ojokoro, Lagos.
He alleged that following a heated argument, a fight broke out among the trio during which the defendants beat Oluseye to death with their fists.
Udoh pleaded not guilty.
Saidu could not take his plea because there was no interpreter to read the charge to him in his Hausa language.
But when the case was called Tuesday, an interpreter, Mr Ibrahim Abdulhakim, was provided by the court, following which Saidu was docked.
However, mild drama ensued when the charge, which was read in English, was interpreted to Saidu.
Saidu did not take his plea.
He said: “I didn’t help to hide the plea, but I was aware the first defendant murdered someone.”
When the court insisted he take his plea, Saidu pleaded guilty.
The judge said: “By pleading guilty, does he understand the meaning?”
When the charge was re-read to him the defendant still appeared confused.
Nevertheless, he said: “I did.”
Interpreter: Ka yi? (Did you?)
Saidu: “Na yi” (I did)
Interpreter: Ka yi? (Did you?)
Saidu: “Na yi” (I did)
Interpreter: Ka yi? (Did you?)
Saidu: “Na yi” (I did)
Justice Ogunsanya said: “The court finds the second defendant guilty as charged.
“The offence the second defendant is charged with, according to the law, carries a maximum punishment of two years imprisonment.
“The information before the court shows that the defendant has been in custody since March 2016.
“The defendant has therefore duly served his punishment, he is hereby discharged.”
The case was adjourned till May 9, for Udoh, trial.
The discovery of two corpses in Kaiama Local Government Area of Kwara following exchange of gun shots between members of a local vigilance group and some gunmen has heightened tension in the council area.
DSP Ajayi Okesanmi, the Public Relations Officer of the Kwara Police Command, has already confirmed the recovery of the two corpses.
Okasanmi said five suspects had been arrested and were assisting the police in their investigation.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the local vigilance group in the area recorded casualties in an attempt to dislodge the gunmen from their camp at the centre of the 50- kilometre National Park located in the area.
A source told NAN that the gunmen often dispossess residents of the communities in the area of their belongings, particularly food, livestock and cash.
The source, who preferred anonymity, told NAN that the hoodlums attack people in Tungan Maje, Woro and Nukku after mounting a road block.
The source said the weapons used by the gunmen were more sophisticated than the ones used by members of the local vigilance group.
The Chairman of the council, Alhaji Abdullahi Abubakar, told NAN that deployment of members of the local vigilance group was for surveillance to prevent further attacks on communities in the area.
“Unfortunately, when the vigilance group members approached the gunmen in their camp, they killed one vigilance group member while three others are missing,” he said. (NAN)
Some may say it has a new life. Others call it alive but with a false breath of life. Others will conclude that Biafra is not alive, but dead. Others still observe that the so-called southeast maelstrom is merely imbuing Biafra with a life that is not there.
If it is dead, why are we discussing it? Why is a freebooter with a spectacle and a bigoted register at the head of its boil? if it is boiling, does it make it alive? If it is alive though, what kind of life can we attribute to an agitation that the Igbo elite are too ashamed or timid to define or associate with in clear language? Why is the acting president convening dialogues, why are senators sniping, a former central bank boss (Soludo) a sympathiser, an Igbo intellectual like Nwabueze lying from both sides of his octogenarian mouth to appease the cause?
But for this writer, Biafra is dead. It is only pretending to be alive, propped up by phony leaders, polemicised by unfledged intellectuals, triggered by a lure of enterprise and profit, backed by incendiary propaganda machine, fired on by an imperial state of mind, enriched by a tribe of gullible followers and riven by a lack of ideological or cultural clarity.
For all those who know this and still war on, they say in their minds, “Biafra is dead. Long live Biafra!” The irony and hypocrisy fascinate. They know that the pursuit of an independent state of Biafra is like Samuel Becket’s waiting for Godot. It is like a song, an intoxicant, an aphrodisiac, a rallying cry. It is melodious, beautiful, demoniac, soulful, lurks in the heart, burns the adrenaline, and no more.
Biafra had life once, and breathed into being in the tactile air of tyranny. It was a great and worthy cause then. It rose on the ashes of tribesmen and women slashed and daggered to death in pogroms. Its leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu with his immaculate diction and soaring rhetoric, jolted the nation and, some may say, the world in its early months. Until it fell foul of its own logic by owning other Nigerians in what is now the Niger Delta. Biafra lost it moral impetus for everyone except the southeast. Since then it has flailed to its death. It had neither the support nor sympathy of the southern minorities. Biafra literally shot itself in the foot.
After the hostilities ceased, Biafra has only lived in fantasy. Ojukwu knew that when he returned from exile. He did not pitch his tent with his southeast political brotherhood, but dined with the same seance against which he asked his fellow tribes men to fight and die. The NPN, that is. So, he did not really hate those for whom he asked his people to die. The poet Yeats captured this in these lines: “Those I fight I do not hate/ those I guard I do not love.” By that very association of surrender with the NPN, Ojukwu resounded the gong and euthanasia of Biafra. He embalmed the idea. All his protestations for Biafra after that misadventure were like trying to save a beheaded John the Baptist.
Since then the mention of Biafra has been a romance with the dead. It has been a corpse that has refused to decompose, but a corpse all the same. It reminds one of the Spanish film, the Corpse of Anna Fritz, where the body of a model captures the erotic embers of some young men who make love to it in the mortuary. Senegalese Poet Leopold Senghor describes it as the “dead who have refused to die.” It is gone but not in the fantasies of the obsessed.
The golden age of Biafra was, unfortunately, an age of misadventure and failure. The Chinese leaders of the 20th century have characterised the 19th century as their age of humiliation, where nations like Japan and Russia made mincemeat of the people that once towered over the east. Biafra’s age of humiliation was the 1960’s. It duelled and expired in the dust of heroic miscalculations and strategic naiveté.
The ethnic entrepreneur, Nnamdi Kanu, has been owned by his followers in high and low places in the east as a pretext to fight for restructuring, a voice not heard in the buccaneering days of Jonathan. Now they are saying that we are all Biafrans. By that they mean anyone who is up against the inequity of this federal contraption is riding on the genius of Kanu.
Kanu is an opportunist just like Judas Iscariot. His votaries are conjuring his name to push for a fairer arrangement. He has entered the fray to corrupt it. Judas Iscariot came to the life of Jesus to corrupt the cause. The crucifixion happened and Christians claim redemption from the betrayal of Judas. But the same Judas has been dismissed as a son of perdition. No one thanks Judas for betraying the lord.
For those who say we all are Biafrans, they are not only wrong but wrong-headed. Kanu, for instance, claims that Biafra will extend to the animated states of the Niger Delta, including Rivers, Delta, Akwa Ibom, etc. The fellow recently claims he inspired a great crowd in Port Harcourt. As I noted last week, he rallied Igbos, not the indigenes. The phrase “we are all Biafrans” is an imperial insult on the South-south. That mindset has not learned from the remonstrations of the minorities against the injustices Biafra inflicted them with during the war. They are trying to levitate Kanu, a fringe felon, to a mainstream hero. They are trying to legitimise a cynical buccaneer.
Meanwhile, they are carrying the corpse along, and hoping that someday it will come back, breathing and jerking like a new-born, the failure of a fantastic necrophilia. It’s like the family in William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, where the children take their mother’s corpse on a journey to a place they want it buried. She is laid to mother earth when the stench makes everyone unhappy. If Biafra is so beloved, its fanatics should let it down before it suffocates others. They should make Biafra, in the words of Charles Dicken, “a lovely corpse.” Not a stinking one.
The Police Command in Kebbi has arrested a 37-year-old man, Danbaba Umar, in Kaoje, Bagudo Local Government Area, who specialises in exhuming corpses from graves for ritual purposes.
The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Ibrahim Kabiru, told newsmen in Birnin Kebbi on Thursday that the arrest of the suspect followed a tip-off.
He said Umar was arrested at about 3:30 a.m. at the Kaoje graveyard while attempting to exhume a male corpse for ritual purposes.
He said the suspect confessed to the crime and revealed that he was sent to commit the act by one, Malam Muhammadu from Sokoto State.
A father of ten, the suspect told newsmen that he was a professional driver who was transporting wood planks from Zaria to Sokoto for sale prior to his recruitment for the criminal act.
Umar said inadequate money to cater for his family compelled him to engage in the crime.(NAN)
How Boko Haram transformed them from innocent girls into sex slaves and suicide bombers
THE girl died in Maryam Alhaji-Wakil on a sunlit afternoon in Bama. That fateful day in 2014, insurgents of the deadly terrorist sect, Jama’atul ahl al-sunnah li da’awati wal jihad (JAS) a.k.a Boko Haram, invaded her town and burnt her home. They killed her relatives and decapitated her neighbours. Then they abducted her. She was nine years old.
Maryam
Maryam’s abductors whisked her to Sambisa Forest, their terror enclave. There, she was forcibly married to Modu, a ‘violent’ member of the sect. Hence in two days, little Maryam was violently thrust into womanhood. Modu, 35, forced his way into her unripe orifice, robbing her of innocence and the mystic pleasure of first adult sexual experience. Modu was hasty and rough thus making her ‘first time’ bestial and replete with pain. She screamed in agony but Modu didn’t care. “The louder I screamed, the more violently he shoved into me until I passed out.”
When she came to, the nine-year-old from Bama had transformed into a broken woman in the corpse of a child.
Maryam remembers Sambisa Forest like a purgatory for sins her nine-year-old heart could make no sense of. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was playing with my friends when they came to kidnap me,” she said. Speaking exclusively with The Nation in Maiduguri, sullenness crept into her eyes, rendering it weary and wan in split seconds. “They stormed our village at noon. They shot and stabbed at everybody in sight. They lined up our neighbours and killed them. In the mayhem, I could not find my parents. I heard they escaped before Boko Haram could kill them,” disclosed Maryam.
As she recounted her grisly past, her tired gaze burned into some mythic distance. Her shiny eyelids blinked as if to shut out her dismal past. But she couldn’t. Vignettes of blood and hastily carved corpses stole from her lips into the air. The effect was numbing, spine-chilling to be precise. Bitterness bulged from convulsive theatres of blood that brutally marred her past, into the russet radiance of the day.
“They forced me to marry Modu. He was a nasty man. He forced himself on me. He raped me. He was a very mean man,” revealed Maryam.
Life as Modu’s wife was hellish. Modu was a very poor man. He was an ordinary foot soldier of Boko Haram, hence unlike the sect’s commanding officers, he had no means to cater for his wife but he aggressively sought to assert his conjugal rights.
Maryam relived the excruciating nights that she laid captive and helpless under his massive bulk while he plowed into her. “Because I was an unwilling bride, he always raped me,” revealed Maryam. Reprieve, however, came her way two weeks into her marriage with Modu; in the wake of Boko Haram’s feverish recruitment of underage girls as suicide bombers, Maryam volunteered to serve as one of the terrorist sect’s agents of death.
Predictably, Modu flew into a rage. “He didn’t want me to do it but he was too proud to beg me. So, he divorced me. He said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. I don’t need you again anyway. Go and die.’ But I didn’t care because I had achieved my wish. I was getting out of the marriage. I was leaving Sambisa,” she said.
‘They forced me to marry Modu. He was a nasty man. He forced himself on me. He raped me. He was a very mean man… Because I was an unwilling bride, he always raped me’
Thus Maryam was dispatched with a bomb to neighbouring Cameroon. She was taken on a motorcycle to blow up any soft target military post in Mainana, Cameroon. But Maryam had other plans.
“When the rider dropped me, I approached the soldiers and told them, ‘I have this thing on my body. It is a bomb. I was sent to kill you. Please, help me remove it,” she said. Instantly, the soldiers sprung into defensive position but realising that she had come to surrender, they approached her and unstrapped the explosive from her body.
Maryam spent several months in the custody of the Cameroonian gendarmes until she was handed over to the Nigerian military.
Hard as it was to picture the extent of bitterness devastating Maryam’s heart, an intense gape into her eyes indicated a girl utterly torn apart. Beneath her pretty face lurks a battered soul. Now 12 years of age, Maryam is yet to break out the jailhouse of her past. She is still the starry-eyed nine-year-old that got whisked off to Sambisa Forest, while her relatives and neighbours fell in a bloody heap, to the bullets of Boko Haram’s terror squads.
The 12-year-old girl recounted with grief and a mien that suggested, among other things, a visceral lust for vengeance, her ordeal in captivity of Boko Haram. Then she fell silent, staring ardently into the distance. It was a macabre silence replete with spasms of blood-curdling angst, misery and discontent, three-years old.
Like Maryam, Aishatu Buba’s pain transcends the passing tribute of a sigh. Buba married her husband, Ba’ana, in 2005. She was eight years old. But she was abducted three years ago from Bama, just after she turned 17, by Boko Haram.
Until Boko Haram stormed her home in Bama, Buba lived in peace with her husband and two-year-old son, Shettima. But no sooner did the terrorists invade her neighbourhood than her world crumbled. Foot soldiers of the group snatched Buba from her home and whisked her away to Sambisa along with other abductees. They took her away with her infant son.
In Sambisa Forest, Buba was forcibly remarried to Momodu, an infantry soldier of Boko Haram. Momodu, like several of his peers, had no means of catering to his new wife and stepson’s needs.
Momodu was a very poor man. He couldn’t take care of me. He could not even feed me and my son. All he knew how to do is to sleep with me. Because of the harsh conditions in Sambisa Forest, my son, Shettima, died barely six months after our abduction. He died of dehydration and malnutrition. The hardship was too much for an infant. When he died, I was heartbroken, but Momodu didn’t care.
“I am not sure my first husband is alive. One year after I was taken to Sambisa, Momodu went on a raid and he came back to tell me that they had killed everyone in Bama. He told me Ba’ana was one of the casualties. He said they killed them all and dumped them in a well,” she said.
•Amina with the daughter of one of her mates, an ex-wife of a Boko Haram insurgent
Buba said her captors returned to Sambisa Forest to rejoice. “When the Nigerian Army approached to dislodge them, their commander instructed them ‘Kill them all!’ He told them to kill everybody in sight. So they killed my people in Bama and dumped them in a well,” lamented Buba.
Despite the harsh realities of being Momodu’s wife, Buba couldn’t prevent him from sleeping with her. Thus besides keeping her hungry and subjecting her to incessant sexual and physical abuse, Momodu got her pregnant.
By the time she was rescued from Sambisa Forest, Buba was with Momodu’s child, a six-month-old infant girl. She named her Fatima.
Being Fatima’s mother…Playing mom to a child born of rape
Fatima reminds Buba of a past she would rather forget. Every day, she struggles to renew her resolve to love the infant girl. It’s so hard to love the child whose father, Momodu, abducted her from her home in Bama, killed her husband and starved her first son, Shettima, to death.
Until she put to bed, Buba dreamt of ripping her belly apart to rid it of the child whose immense bulk tilted her wiry frame forward as if she would keel over. But she couldn’t. She silently bore the pains and demands of pregnancy on her lean body. At full term, she viewed her unborn child like a vulgar cyst, jutting from her belly, impeding her steps.
But no sooner did she put to bed than the revulsion she felt vanished from her heart. “At first, it was so hard to love her. There were times I wished she would come out stillborn but immediately I set my eyes on her, the rage I felt vanished from my heart. I fell in love with her. Right there, I named her Fatima,” said Buba.
Bama: Boko Haram carried out most of its abductions and carnage in the township
But that momentary surge of love vanished sooner than she imagined. To Buba’s chagrin, as Fatima grows, she reminds her of realities she would rather erase from her memory and past.
“It’s so hard to love her. I have been constantly scorned and abused because of her. My people abuse me for keeping her. They blame me for getting pregnant for a Boko Haram soldier. But it’s not my fault. Who wishes to get abducted, beaten and raped by a terrorist? I never wished to have a child for Momodu but it is Allah’s will. What am I to do?” said Buba.
Where children are Annoba (Epidemic)
Far from the ugliness of their world, a different kind of cruelty is meted out to an eight-month-old and his mom. His name is Abuya. This minute, Abuya grows into a boy. The eight-month-old is different from what he looked like when the midwife took delivery of him from Ba Amsa, his mother, on Dalora refugee camp. Ba Amsa, 18, welcomed him with mixed feelings. Every day unfurled as a fresh struggle to accept Abuya. But she is learning to love him, even as you read.
She dreads the day he will begin to ask why the neighbours call him ‘Bad blood.’ She is terrified of the moment that Abuya would ask why they call his mother ‘vampire’ and “Annoba,” (epidemic).
Ba Amsa will respond in pain. She will couch the sordid details of his conception and birth in a clutter of woe and earnest tears. Despite her anguish, she would tell her son to ignore the neighbours’ hatred and unkind words. She would probably tell him that there is a garden in his face where roses and white lilies grow. She would never call him the living proof of her shame.
“This child does not even know of its own existence…so he has no blame. All the bad things that happened to me are because of his father, not him. This child is innocent,” said Ba Amsa.
•Buba with her child, Fatima
On Ba Amsa’s due date, she went into labour with hostile feelings, in a hostile environment. Before she put to bed, Ba Amsa dreaded that her child would become a burden to her. Now that she has put to bed, the 18-year-old regrets that her beautiful child is born to strife and ugliness.
‘Momodu was a very poor man. He couldn’t take care of me. He could not even feed me and my son. All he knew how to do was to sleep with me. Because of the harsh conditions in Sambisa Forest, my son, Shettima, died barely six months after our abduction. He died of dehydration and malnutrition…’
“Children are like flowers. They are like roses. Roses are poisoned with ugliness. The situation in the northeast is too ugly to raise a child. Life here is very ugly. Very, very ugly for the Nigerian child,” lamented Halima Sule, a Borno-based social health worker.
Indeed, no child should be born into ugliness. Not Abuya, Fatima or any other child. But the eight-month-old was sired in pain and utmost cruelty. Ask his teenage mom. Due to a limp she suffered as a result of childhood polio, she couldn’t run fast enough to escape when the dreaded terrorist sect, Boko Haram, stormed her neighbourhood in Bama, in September 2014.
They abducted her and her sister and took them to an improvised women’s prison for three months. “They would tell us, ‘Men are coming to look at you,’ and told us to stand up and show our breasts, then they would pick five or 10 of us. More than 20 had been taken away before they came for me. You couldn’t resist, because the men were armed with guns, and if you did, they took you to the bush and killed you.”
The man who picked her was someone she knew from Bama and they stayed in a house in the village. “He was under 30 and didn’t seem to know anything about religion…I couldn’t resist him, he was armed,” said Ba Amsa.
When the Nigerian Army recaptured Bama, Ba Amsa was pregnant. This time she managed to get away. Her son, Abuya, now eight months old, was born in the camp and she was reunited with her parents. Her four siblings – three brothers and a sister – are still missing. Ba Amsa said she is lucky because her family still supports her but she would give anything to change the tide of public opinion about her and her infant son, Abuya.
There is no gainsaying the fact that she nurses her baby in an hostile environment – both mother and child endure each day on the Dalori refugee camp.
‘How my Boko Haram husband starved my three-month-old brother to death
AMINA YUSUF’s story also incites deep empathy and grief. Hardly anyone knows that, as she picks up the pieces of her life, the 17-year-old former suicide bomber, who was recently apprehended by security operatives in Maiduguri, struggles with grief she had never spoken, every day.
Nobody knew that Amina was abducted along with her parent’s last child, who is also her youngest sibling. His name was Sadiq and he was three months old.
Soon after Boko Haram abducted her entire family and took them to Sambisa and then Gobarawa training camp. Her parents tried to escape with them from the camp but they were killed by infantry soldiers of the terrorist sect.
Her mother, who was nursing Sadiq at the period, was shot in the leg and in her belly while trying to escape. Despite that,
•Amina has undergone remarkable improvement. She wishes to become a civil servant
she clung tenaciously to Sadiq, Amina’s three-month-old brother. Seeing her cling obstinately to life infuriated her assaulters. As Amina and her siblings pleaded for mercy, a gangly insurgent stepped forward, cocking his gun; swearing out aloud, he shot her in the head, at very close range. Amina watched in horror as her mother’s brain spattered through fragments of her bashed skull and Sadiq slipped from her grasp into the dust and scorched earth.
Quietly, she stepped forward to retrieve her infant brother from her dead mother’s arms. Then without a struggle, she followed her captors back to the camp in Gobarawa. Immediately after her arrival in the camp, she was married off to Abu Mohammed, a senior officer in the terrorist sect. But despite earning a ‘fat salary,’ Mohammed refused to provide for Amina and three-month-old Sadiq.
Three months after her forced marriage to Abu Mohammed, Sadiq died of malnutrition and dehydration. At his death, something broke in Amina.
‘Quietly, she stepped forward to retrieve her infant brother from her dead mother’s arms. Then without a struggle, she followed her captors back to the camp in Gobarawa. Immediately after her arrival in the camp, she was married off to Abu Mohammed, a senior officer in the terrorist sect. But despite earning a ‘fat salary,’ Mohammed refused to provide for Amina and three-month-old Sadiq.’
“My younger siblings, Umar, Fatima, Fauziya, Abbas, Maryam and Faiza, were all held hostage. The girls among them were married off to Boko Haram men in Gobarawa. And my parents had been killed while trying to escape. I was bitter and very angry. Soon afterwards, they transferred me back to Sambisa, I wanted to leave that place at all cost. I was too far away from my siblings. I knew no one in Sambisa and I hated to live with Abu Mohammed. I hated to be his wife,” revealed Amina.
According to her, Mohammed soon lost patience with her. “He was tired of me because I became a bitter bride,” said Amina. Hence when the sect’s leadership embarked on a recruitment drive for suicide bombers, Mohammed offered to enlist Amina as a suicide bomber. Amina was only too happy to seize the opportunity to leave his house although she stubbornly stated that she would not detonate her bomb.
Amina was eventually dispatched with a mate, Zainab, to attack soft targets in Maiduguri.
It took Amina and Zainab three days to get to Maiduguri, travelling on a motorcycle. She said: “We were directed by the sect members to detonate our explosives anywhere we saw any form of gathering…They said if we press the button, the bomb would explode and we will automatically go to heaven. I was scared, so, I told them that I could not detonate any explosive. But Zainab said she would do it. So, they said if Zainab detonated her own, it would serve the purpose.”
However, things didn’t go according to plan in Maiduguri. At 6.45 a.m., Amina and Zainab were accosted in the city, after a bean-cake seller alerted NSCDC operatives about their suspicious moves. But while Amina balked from the mission, Zainab decided to go ahead with it. She ignored Amina’s counsel that they flee into the city and seek help.
Fortunately, the bean-cake seller noticed their suspicious moves and male accomplices and she alerted NSCDC officers in the vicinity. Promptly, the latter marched up to the girls to interrogate them. But no sooner did they accost them than their male handlers disappeared. Instantly, Amina revealed that she was strapped to a bomb. The security operatives scurried backwards and cocked their rifles to shoot. In the scuffle, Amina unstrapped her bomb and tossed it away.
Zainab ignored the NSCDC’s sharp orders that she stood down and proceeded to detonate the bomb. This attracted a warning shot from the NSCDC to her limbs. The shot was meant to demobilise her. But even while she writhed in a blood pool from her bleeding leg, the teenager stubbornly sought to detonate the bomb. This earned her a ‘kill-shot,’ this time around, from a soldier’s rifle. It was either Zainab’s life or the lives of several innocent folk citizens.
Amina looked upbeat and remarkably more robust than she was at the time of The Nation’s first encounter with her. Her cheeks have become flush and her skin has lost the pallor that made her seem withered and malnourished. The 17-year-old attributed the improvement in her state to the Nigerian military.
“They give us good food. They counsel us and give us medicines and clothes. They give us sanitary pads too. I feel safer with them,” she said.
Like Amina, Buba and Maryam are enthused about the care and support they receive at the detention facility in which they are held. Buba is particularly thrilled that through the intervention of their military caregivers and counsellors in the army’s deradicalisation and rehabilitation programme, perceptions about her and Fatima, her child, are beginning to change for better.
“They no longer call me Boko Haram wife. They don’t call my child Annoba (epidemic) or suicide bomber again,” she said.
The centre for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) fleeing Boko Haram terrorism is located outside the Borno State capital of Maiduguri, and it is home to over 21,000 refugees from Bama. There, rather than the safety she sought, she is facing a new nightmare: fellow IDPs on the camp do not think too highly of former Boko Haram sex slaves like Ba Amsa and the products of their unfortunate relations with members of the terrorist sect.
Hauwa, 17, also recounted her experience in the captivity of Boko Haram. She said the youngest victim of the killings in her hometown, Bama, was her one-month-old baby whose head was bashed with cudgels and the butt-end of a rifle while strapped to her back. His name was Ahmadu and he died while his mother, Hauwa, survived. The bereaved mother was abducted with her younger sister, 13-year-old Saratu. Saratu was forcibly married to a Boko Haram soldier as a third wife, while Hauwa was taken as another soldier’s second wife.
The morning after Saratu’s wedding night, revealed Hauwa, “She told me: He has broken me. I am not your innocent girl anymore. I feel like dying.’ But I begged her not to die because she would leave me alone in the world,” she said. Saratu eventually committed suicide by trying to kill her husband. The latter manically shot her in the head. She had committed an unforgivable sin by trying to poison him, simply because he killed her parents, abducted her and made her his sex slave.
•Boko Haram en route its theatre of carnage and abductions
Life as a social pariah
Although Buba and co claimed to enjoy a better deal in the Nigerian military’s detention facilities, The Nation investigations revealed that a worse fate awaits those that are currently living in official and unofficial resettlement centres for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The communities are wary of accepting children sired by Boko Haram fighters. They are scared of reintegrating with their teenage mothers and women too – it doesn’t matter that they were abducted, forcefully married and serially raped by members of the terrorist sect. Nobody wants to be seen with offspring and ex-wives of the dreaded terror sect. Thus infant children of Boko Haram fighters and their mothers arriving IDP camps from newly liberated areas in the northeast face extreme stigmatisation.
Popular cultural beliefs about ‘bad blood’ and witchcraft, as well as the extent of the violence experienced by people at the hands of the terrorist sect form the basis of this fear. This general perception has been exacerbated by stories of women and girls returning from captivity and murdering their parents. Such accounts give rise to the fear that “If we accept sons and daughters of Boko Haram, they (the mothers) may come back to kill us.”
Women and girls who spent time in captivity are often referred to by communities as “Boko Haram wives,” “Sambisa women,” “Boko Haram blood” and “Annoba” (which means epidemics). The description of these girls and women as an ‘epidemic’ reveals fears that their exposure to the terrorist group could spread to others. This infers that these girls and women were radicalised while in captivity, and if allowed to reintegrate into their communities, they might recruit others. However, excluding some cases in IDP camps, communities expressed the belief that over time, relations could be rebuilt and that the women and girls could gradually be accepted and trusted by the displaced community.
However, acute fear and suspicion persist of children born of sexual violence, whose fathers are believed to be Boko Haram fighters. It is unlikely that such fears and suspicion will decrease, according to Dr. Abubakar Monguno of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID). Monguno, working with a team including Dr. Yagana Imam, Yagana Bukar and Bilkisu Lawan Gana from UNIMAID, and in collaboration with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), the Borno State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, International Alert and UNICEF, authored a report on the crisis. Findings revealed that hostile perceptions place children conceived of rape and violence on Boko Haram terror camps “at risk of rejection, abandonment, discrimination and potential violence.”
“While women and girl victims of sexual violence, and to some extent their families, have more nuanced views, most of the conflict-affected communities are not prepared to accept children born of sexual violence by Boko Haram,” explained Monguno.
‘Hyenas among dogs’
Further findings revealed that the children are called “hyenas among dogs,” as one community leader described them. Entrenched hostilities fueled by bias among communities in the country’s northeast refer to “bad blood” transmitted to children by their biological father – “a child of a snake is a snake” is a common saying.
There is a belief that, like their fathers, the children will inevitably do what hyenas do and ‘eat’ the innocent dogs around them.” In addition to the immediate risks to these children, it is likely that they will be stigmatised throughout their life, thus increasing their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. Moreover, the fears that these children may have the blood of their fathers in their veins and will therefore be a risk to communities may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as communities reject and discriminate against them, in turn increasing their vulnerability to radicalisation in the future,” noted Monguno and company.
“People believe those who were abducted by Boko Haram have become sympathisers with the terrorists and had a spell cast over them,” explained Dr Yagana Bukar, a lecturer at Maiduguri University who also comes from Bama, and who interviewed dozens of these women in camps across Maiduguri for a recent report by the charity International Alert and Unicef.
“Because camps are organised by village, everyone knows your story and no one wants to associate with those taken by Boko Haram. So after everything else they have been through, they end up ostracised,” noted Bukar.
‘He’s my destiny’…Another mother’s perception of her child born of sexual violence
“People can think the worst of me, I do not care,” said Hannatu Ahmedu, 16, who has a 10-month-old baby by her Boko Haram husband. “I have this child now and I can only love him and care for him. People want me to dump him. My childhood friend wants me to kill him. If I didn’t abandon him while running in the forest, why should I abandon him now? I can only love him. He’s my destiny,” she said.
Even though girls and women face rejection by their families and communities as well as the trauma of the sexual violence they have experienced, many of them expressed a willingness to keep their children. The majority of the mothers, many of whom are barely teenagers, are displaying natural affection for their children. However, not all of the mothers are willing or able to care for the children, and some of those interviewed had tried to abort the pregnancy. For instance, Nimat Abdullahi, 15, allegedly tried to abort her pregnancy and almost died of complications arising from her attempts.
The Global Terrorism Index ranks Boko Haram as the world’s deadliest terrorist group. In its ever more violent quest to create an Islamic caliphate in Northern Nigeria, the group has killed over 17,000 people, razed villages and forced more than two million people to flee their homes over the past seven years. Living up to its name, which translates as “western education is forbidden,” it has also forced more than one million children out of school, according to UNICEF. The group burns buildings, abducts thousands to work as cooks, lookouts and sex slaves.
Those are the lucky ones. The refugee camps have noticeably few young men. Findings revealed that when the terrorist sect storms a village, it forces the teenage boys to dig trenches, where their bodies are dumped after their throats have been slit. This is common knowledge because the terrorists film the dastardly acts. They also film schoolgirls being raped over and over again until their screams become silent.
While the Chibok case raised awareness about Boko Haram’s kidnapping spree, it was one of hundreds of such raids across the region. Amnesty International estimates that at least 2,000 women and girls have been abducted since 2014, along with many more men and boys.
Amina is understood to be one of just two living children of her widowed mother and was reunited with her in the family’s village near Chibok before both women and the baby were taken to a military camp.
In his first Presidential media chat in December 2015, following his electoral victory on March 28, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari, told the world that he had no credible intelligence on the girls location. The statement came as an answer to people who questioned why the girls hadn’t been rescued despite promises made by the All Progressives Congress (APC) Buhari’s party, during the campaigns that culminated in the March 28 Presidential elections. The APC promised to ensure speedy release of the girls if voted into power. Having passed on the message of lack of credible lead, Buhari set up a panel to investigate the circumstances leading to the disappearance of the girls. That was the case until May 10 when some soldiers working with local vigilante members, spotted and rescued Amina with her four-month-old baby—evidence of sexual assault on her person in the forest.
Recently, Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki was discovered wandering with her baby on the edge of the Sambisa Forest, one of the last strongholds of Boko Haram, by a vigilante group set up to tackle them. Amina and her fellow captives were forcibly converted to Islam, made to wear hijabs, married off to their captors and bore them children as well as cooking and cleaning for them.
It is believed that she spent two years in the custody of her captives. Amina, according to her family, is “traumatised” by her time with the deadly terror group.
She told her rescuers that six of the 219 girls still thought to be held by the group had died, and others were being held “under heavy terrorist captivity” in the vast forest 40 miles south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State which has been at the centre of Boko Haram’s operations.
More than 50 girls escaped during the Boko Haram raid on their boarding school on the night of April 14, but Amina is the first to be freed since that day.
Natives of Chibok thronged its dusty streets to cheer the military convoy that brought Amina into town. The school’s vice-principal confirmed the girl’s identity, prompting more cheers. Aboku Gaji, the leader of Chibok’s vigilante brigade, recounted her mother’s ecstasy as he escorted her home. The moment her mother saw her, she reportedly shouted: ‘Amina, Amina!’ and crushed the returnee in a warm embrace. Idriss Danladi, the village doctor, revealed that Amina’s mother had tried to commit suicide some months after her daughter was seized. Now, neighbours believe Amina’s mother dwells in heaven on earth.
But that is as good as the story gets, the rescued girl and her child, Safiya, has to overcome the misery of trauma and social stigma. This harsh reality has been known to punctuate the feelings of joy and fulfillment felt by the girls and their families with narratives of pain and sorrow undiminished.
•Ba’ Amsa and son, Abuya
Psychological expert opinion suggested that it’s about time the government and other humanitarian actors enhanced service provision and access to services for women and girls who are survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. They should ensure that the services are survivor centred. In particular, they should integrate support for children born of sexual violence and their mothers into existing programmes on gender-based violence (GBV), child protection and women’s empowerment.
‘I was in JSS 3 when Boko Haram kidnapped me. I want to go back to school. Someday, I will become a teacher. What happened to me is not the end of the world. Boko Haram took everything from me but I have Fatima’
They should continue to provide medical and psycho-social support during pregnancy and after birth for the current returnees and make preparations for a potential influx of new survivors over the next few months as more Boko Haram strongholds are retaken by the JTF.
The support efforts should also integrate social workers into health clinics (including at the point of registration) to provide a comprehensive assessment and response for women, girls and children born of sexual violence. And where families are identified as being at risk of breakdown, social workers should ensure that follow-up home visits are conducted together with religious officials to provide guidance to husbands and family members and that family mediation is carried out, according to Dr. Monguno and his team.
But that is in the long run. In the short run, urgent steps need be taken to assist victims like Maryam, Buba, Amina and Ba Amsa to pick the broken pieces of their lives. To many, their struggles blend into the hobbling steps of the northeast’s brutal ethno-religious re-awakening, as the country limps towards some vague promise of a better future.
The fate of the children Fatima, Abuya and Safiya however, resonates a tragedy so overpowering that it becomes a torrent of feelings. Buba, for instance, struggles through feelings of hatred and guilt. She feels intense loathing for Fatima’s father, and Fatima for being a sad reminder of the man who killed her husband, starved her son to death and repeatedly raped her. Beyond that there is guilt. Guilt for hating a child so innocent and pure for a crime she did not commit.
“It is difficult to hate her. I love her so much. But every time I look at her, I get sad,” said Buba, who wishes to be a teacher. “I was in JSS 3 when Boko Haram kidnapped me. I want to go back to school. Someday, I will become a teacher. What happened to me is not the end of the world. Boko Haram took everything from me but I have Fatima,” she said.
At the backdrop of her disclosure, Fatima cried. She babbled in a language no school could teach. Then Buba leaned over, her lips pursed as if to bestow a kiss. She would not kiss her. She stayed suspended above her wiry frame, staring at her the way a child bride views dead foetus extracted from her womb. But the child did not know that.
Hours after the birth of her twin girls, Margaret Emmanuel gave up the ghost, leaving her husband with the twins and their three grown-up siblings. To make matters worse, Margaret’s family in Ebonyin are demanding that Emmanuel fulfils a vital aspect of their culture before the burial ceremonies even commence. Taiwo Abiodun reports.
At first it was congratulations and celebration galore as Madam Margaret Emmanuel was delivered of a set of beautiful twin girls. But few hours after, the joyful mood turned sour and mourning took over, as news filtered in that mother of the twins had passed on. She gave up the ghost on her way to the hospital, living the twins behind without the very vital motherly care. It also marked the beginning of the trauma of her husband and father of the twins, Mr. Adejo Emmanuel. Aside being shattered by the news, he was suddenly faced with a somewhat insurmountable challenge of weaning two infants alone. But the trauma did not end there, only Emmanuel didn’t know at this point in time.
While lamenting his predicament, Emmanuel said, “My life is like a balloon that was punctured with a pin, which immediately deflated it of all the joy. When a woman is pregnant the prayer is to hear the babies’ cries and that of the mother’s joy; but now the mother is gone, leaving the babies,” Emmanuel said, sobbing.
That was the story of the Emmanuel family last December 21. As if the agony was not enough, the deceased’s family members sent a message to the husband that he has to obey their custom and tradition by performing certain rituals and rites. Chief amongst these rights includes performing the mandatory marriage ceremonies with the deceased wife, an activity the couple had failed to perform while the late Margaret was alive. Without that, they told him that he is barred from coming to his wife’s village in Akenze, Ebonyin State, let alone, burying the corpse.
Emmanuel, a peasant farmer in his mid-50s is thus being called upon to go through wedding ceremonies with his late wife’s corpse. Coming from Emmanuel’s Igala ethnic background, this is rather bizarre and unimaginable. He lamented, “I don’t know what went wrong and I don’t know my sin. Like any other fellow Christian, when everybody was preparing for Christmas, I was preparing as well, both for a merry Christmas, safe delivery for my wife and a successful naming ceremony for the babies; not knowing that I had another thing coming.”
Late Margaret’s last moment
Narrating his wife’s last moment, Emmanuel said he suddenly saw his wife at Ugbagbo farm in Owo, where he was working unannounced. “When I saw her, I scolded her and asked why she came all the way to the farm, because she was already heavy and ready to deliver. I also asked why she did not go to the hospital instead of coming to the farm to meet me. Of course, this was not her first pregnancy, as she had previously had four children before this pregnancy. To compound matters, there was no vehicle to take her back to town that evening. We therefore waited till the second day. However she went into labour in between and was delivered of the twin girls. She was attended to by Traditional Birth Attendants, but the placenta did not come out. We quickly got her into a vehicle and headed for the General Hospital at Oke-Ogun in Owo. Unfortunately she did not make it, as she gave up the ghost at the entrance of the hospital. I noticed that her condition had worsened and she was getting dizzy. She thus got to the hospital, dead. To say the least, I was devastated. I became confused and almost ran mad. The nurses, who knew her, were surprised that she went to the farm instead of the hospital. She was well known at the hospital, because that was where she had all her children. She had also attended antenatal there.”
Twins under custody
Honourable Segun Obasekola, a Councillorship aspirant in Igboroko Nla Street, Owo and landlord of No 44, Igboroko Nla Street, where the family resides, said he pitied the man, Emmanuel for losing his wife at childbirth: “When they approached me for a room and I discovered they had no money, I have no choice but to allow them use the room free-of-charge. I did not know anyone of them, but as a community leader and a man with milk of kindness, I think this is one way I can render help. Here a Good Samaritan, Mrs. Femisola Akilamilo is taking care of the twins. Mrs. Akinlamilo, a prophetess who is also called Mother of Children (Iya Ewe) in her Cherubim and Seraphim Church.”
When The Nation got to 44, Igboroko Nla Street, the woman and the babies were found in a room, where she takes care of them.
Speaking, the twins’ guardian Madam Akinlamilo said she was called by a church member to come and assist the motherless children who had just been delivered. She said: “My cell phone just rang last December 23 (2015), and a friend broke the news that a mother of twins had just died and there was nobody to take care of them. She added that since I am a mother of kids in the church, I should try and assist in taking care of the babies. He also said I would be given stipends. So I obliged. I am a widow, I have four children and my last child is 11 years old. Since I am not under any man’s roof, I gladly accepted the role of a guardian, as God sent me.”
Asked if she breast-feeds the babies, the woman declared in a touching voice, “There is no milk in my breasts anymore, but the nurses and doctors have recommended their food (SMA). They consume a tin of the baby food within three days, but their father is a poor farmer; so when I ran out of their food, I went to Alhaji Jamiu Ekungba, a gubernatorial aspirant in Ondo State and narrated the story to him in order to solicit his to assistance. I also met one Mr. Jide Tububo, who advised me to go to the press and do the necessary legal papers, for I was ignorant of all such stuff. As I speak, we have no food to give them today, because they have exhausted what we had in stock.”
Asked whether she had intimated the welfare office or the police that she is in custody of the babies, Mrs. Akinlamilo became a bit jittery and said, “I am ignorant of that. I am just acting as a Good Samaritan; I don’t know that I should report to the Welfare Office or the police. Please can you enlighten me more to avoid any problems,” she pleaded with this reporter. Mrs. Akinlamilo said she is appealing to the state government and NGOs to come to the twins’ aide.”
In the course of this discussion, Emmanuel, father of the twins came in with a tin of SMA baby food. He announced with relish that he just bought one tin from the money given to him.
Many rivers to cross
Now the corpse of the late Margaret has been deposited at the mortuary while preparation is on the way to go to Akenze in Ebonyi State to officially announce the news of his wife’s demise and also perform the necessary rituals and rites. But there still is a snag. Emmanuel has no money.
He said: “The family of my late wife have asked me to come and do marriage ceremonies h my wife and come up with the sum of 350,000 naira before anything could even take off. Where would I get the money from? I am confused. They should pity my condition and understand that I’m still taking care of her four children. Three of them are in secondary school, not to talk of the twins,” he said.
So while Margaret’s corpse lies in the mortuary, Emmanuel is confused and disturbed, as he is facing three hurdles: “I have no money to pay for the mortuary; I also have no money to feed the children; and my in-laws are demanding for the death certificate of their daughter, which they say I must bring along whenever I am coming. They also say it is compulsory for me to come over and do a compulsory marriage with her before she could be buried. They say some rituals must be performed and 350,000 naira must be paid to her family as part of her bride-price, before talking about the burial at all. Where do I get the money from? Am I not in trouble now?”
According to Emmanuel, his in-laws don’t even want to entertain or listen to any excuse or explanation; all they care about is for him to fulfil all the necessary requirements.
Asked how he met his wife, Emmanuel replied that, “You can meet your wife anywhere, so far there is love and the woman agrees to marry you. I am from Idah in Igala, Kogi State, and we met here in Owo, Ondo State. I never knew this is what I would face.”
Commotion enveloped the premises of the Ade Maternity Home, Sagamu, on Saturday as scores of grieving students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University(OOU) forcefully removed the corpses of their collegues from the hospital’s morgue.
The Nation gathered that the angry students threatened to make the hospital uncomfortable should it insist on collecting N20,000 per corpse before the dead students would be released to their families.
The enraged students stormed the private hospital’s morgue and evacuated their dead colleagues forcefully without paying and moved them to the morbid anatomy unit of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital(OOUTH) Sagamu.
The Police had a hectic time trying to keep the students under control.
Head of the teaching hospital’s Morbid Anatomy and Histopathology Department, Dr Deji Agboola, told The Nation that after combing private morgues in Sagamu, the remains of the affected students were located at Ade Maternity Home by noon.
He said the angry students refused to yield to the demand for payment by the hospital before the corpses of their colleagues could be released.
The Nation contacted Ade Maternity Home and a man in charge of its morgue who identified himself as Bayo Fasanya said that the corpses were that of the students of OOU and have all been taken away.
He noted that calm had return at the hospital but rued that nobody had yet paid him.
He told the reporter that the Sagamu Area Command of the Nigeria Police Force had said he should let him see the morgue’s service bill when it is ready.
Earlier on Saturday, Agboola, an associate professor and who also doubles as the Chairman of the OOU branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU), said grieving relatives had initially besieged the OOUTH, thinking the victims were kept there.
Agboola added that he, the Head of the Students Affairs and Chief Security Officer of the institution decided to comb private morgues in Sagamu in search of the remains of the student – victims of the accident until they were found at Ade Maternity morgue.
Over a dozen students of OOU were crushed to death and others gravely injured on Friday at Sagamu corridor of Lagoss – Ore expressway when an unlatched 20-feet container from a moving truck came off and fell on the roof of a psssenger bus conveying them.
The weighty container press – pinned the bus to the ground killing the passengers in the accident which involved a truck marked (LAGOS) BDG 779 XE and a Toyota Haiace passenger bus bearing (Lagos) XV 311 MUS.
It was learnt that the OOU students were travelling to Lagos state for the weekend when they met their untimely death.
