A horrible search for 16-year-old girl butchered by her boyfriend

When I left Jalingo for Karim Lamido a week ago to investigate the story of the 16-year-old girl  allegedly impregnated and murdered by her boy friend, I had a rough ride across the River Benue although I enjoyed the sightseeing part of it. Lankaviri village lying at the foothills bordering Jalingo and Lau looked magnificent […]

When I left Jalingo for Karim Lamido a week ago to investigate the story of the 16-year-old girl  allegedly impregnated and murdered by her boy friend, I had a rough ride across the River Benue although I enjoyed the sightseeing part of it. Lankaviri village lying at the foothills bordering Jalingo and Lau looked magnificent as the silver coloured Toyota Collora car we boarded sped past.

At Lau junction, we disembarked and boarded a red Toyota Starlet that took us to Lau, an ancient river bank town. The ride was bumpy as the small car bumped through the rough, dirt road. But I was excited admiring the pleasant lush vegetation and chatting heartily with my colleagues. Arriving Lau, we took motor bikes to the riverbank, where we were ferried across in a dugout and our tedious journey continued through the luxuriant plains of Karim Lamido. As the bikes sped along the cattle tracks, we passed some hamlets and I wondered what life meant to those living in what appeared to me  an island, with no access  roads and or bridges across the River Benue.

We arrived Karim Lamido looking and feeling shabby and weary. But we had a job to do. We had to confirm the story that the 16-year-old pregnant girl was butchered and her lover boy, who was the prime suspect, was arrested by the police, and was in police custody along with his accomplice who attempted aborting the poor girl’s pregnancy, when an angry mob attacked the police station and lynched the two suspects. My colleagues from The Nation, The Guardian and the Leadership newspapers, were more familiar with the terrain but they too felt the exhustionn I  experienced—done in.

“I will do a report on this road. It is unfortunate that Karim Lamido is one of the oldest local government areas in the state since the defunct Gongola State, still without access  road,” the Guardian reporter, Charles Akpeji, exclaimed.

“I was surprised when I came here last February and  was told the local government headquarters was existing since the days of Gongola state and is still appearing like a village. My question is; what went wrong with Taraba State Amenities Restoration and Improvement Programme (TARIP)? Which amenities at all have the state and the local governments ever improved?,” I queried.

My colleagues laughed. “You are yet to see underdevelopment and you are yet to travel on a rough road. By the time you travel to Mayo Ndaga in Sardauna local government, you will understand what I am saying,” the Nation reporter, Fanen Ihyongo, cautioned.

I shook my head as we walked into the local government secretariat, feeling apprehensive. What if the whole story was not true. What if we had to ride back home without the story because it didn’t happen?

Before embarking on the trip, we made unsuccessful attempts to confirm from the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), ASP Mairinda Maiyaki, if the story was true but she could neither deny nor confirm it. Rather, she insisted  that the new Commissioner of Police, Chutua Amajor Onu, would soon hold a press conference on the issue and the story was getting stale. We had to break it.

“Guys, if the police cannot give us the story, we have to go and break it ourselves,” I told my colleagues and that was how we summoned courage to embark on the daunting journey to Karim Lamido. The moment thechairman of the local government area, Idi Mali, said the story was true—three people were killed—a lady and two men, ironically and sadly enough, I felt relieved. I knew I now had my story in the kitty.

The local government council chairman declined to give details but warned his people not to take laws into their hands. He said all tribes are equal and called for tolerance among the multiple tribes in the area.  “Life is sacred. It is not like a piece of paper which you can destroy and buy another one. Those we have lost, we cannot replace them,” he re-itrated.The attack on the police station was for him a lesson. The police have to strengthen its weak capacity, he observed. It has to be properly trained and armed to be combat-ready against crimes and able to repel attacks from mobs.

That, for us was not the story. We wanted to speak, first, with the father of the girl, then the parents of her lover and finally, the DPO of Karim Lamido, to know how and why an incident in a small village like that ran out of hand and resulted into law-taking-into-hands under the very nose of the police.

We then enquired from commercial motorcyclists and we soon found who knew the girl’s house among them. We arrived the rustic village of Karim Maundi and were taken to a large mud and thatched compound  with huts where a group of men were sitting under a shady tree. I immediately picked out the deceased girl’s father. He looked grief-stricken with his clean-shaved head reclining to his shoulder and hands clasped on his thighs.

He told us his name was Danladi Daniel and the deceased girl, Vasty Danladi, was his very firstborn. According to him, he had noticed the love relationship between Caleb Anthony, a 19-year-old student of Government Technical College, Karim Lamido and his late daughter, October last year and months later, he suspected that she was pregnant and when he asked her, she confessed that it was Caleb who was responsible for the pregnancy, adding that Caleb and his father, Anthony, accepted responsibility for the reportedly seven months old pregnancy shortly before the murdered girl went missing for 11 days.By now, he was overwhelmed by grief and tears rolled down his cheeks freely.

“The last night I saw my daughter alive was when Caleb came at 11 pm and took her out. When she did not return after two days, I went to Mr Anthony’s house(Caleb’s father) and gave him a two-day ultimatum to bring my daughter back. The two days elapsed but I did not see her so I decided to report to the police. Unfortunately, the police were more interested in demanding and collecting bribe from me and rebuking me for not taking good care of my daughter than helping me find her. The DPO even alleged that I was only trying to use my daughter to get money from Mr. Anthony,” he lamented.

He said it was when one Abdulrazak, a chemist shop owner, who told Baita, the late Vasty’s friend that Caleb took Vasty to him for abortion and he gave Vasty two injections that it  dawned on him his daughter might have been in danger.

“I went to look for her in the local government health centre and while coming back, I decided to check the abandoned presidential lodge. I saw blood on the floor, then one of  my daughter’s slippers. I stepped further,and then saw her dismembered body. The head was chopped off, breasts sliced off and the belly ripped open with the foetus removed. My legs went wobbly but I pulled myself together and went to the police station where I met the DPO, one Alhaji Mahmud but he didn’t want to listen to me and I collapsed right there,” he said.

We asked him and his kinsmen the whereabouts of Caleb and Abdulazak but they feigned ignorance. We decided to go and take pictures of the mutilated corpse of Vasty, decomposing at the abandoned presidential lodge. But before we left, Daniel looked at us tearfully and said: “I don’t want my daughter to die the way she did. She was so young and beautiful I can’t believe she was butchered to death and dumped to decompose.”

The bright rays of the evening sun were still shining but our group took a flash-light. As we neared the abandoned building, I could imaginarily perceive the acrid odour of the decomposing corpse. But it was when we went inside the eerie uncompleted building that the putrefying odour assailed my nose and my stomach churned. I tried to hold my breath vainlessly. Hordes of flies swarm around as we made our way to the basement of the building, where, with a flash of the light, I saw what remained of Vasty were just bare bones covered with maggots feasting on the putrid flesh. Immediately, I took photo shots of the macabre scene, I ran outside, spitting saliva, trying to control the nauseating sensation that overtook me.

We traced Caleb’s house, hoping to talk to his people but we met a burnt down house  as quiet as the graveyard. Neighbours refused to talk to us. They didn’t know where to start. It was a sad story that nobody wanted to be part of. It was a tribal war between Karimjo and Jenjo and nobody wanted to interfere.We then went to the police station, saw the broken windows and debris of fallen walls of the building but the DPO refused to speak to us.

We again rode on motor bikes through the same cattle tracks back to the riverbank. The plains looked green and beautiful in the twilight. Parrots and finches chirped cheerfully as they went to roost in the boughs of the trees. Cows mooed while bare-chested Fulani women ground millet around smoking fires on the sandy banks of the River Benue. I tried to immerse myself in the romantic environment but the harrowing image of decomposing Vasty kept looming back and blurred every other image in my mind.

I had a horrible night that day. I slept through nightmares and the night was long and scary. Since then, the ghoulish image appeared to have been ingrained in my mind. No matter how hard I try, I am yet to erase it. It has also taken over my olfactory senses. Each time I think of it, I perceive the same horrible stench and I imagine the agony the father would be going through.