Jos housewife’s brush with death ‘I was breastfeeding baby when stray bullet grazed me’

The implementation of the law by the state constituted Task Force under the leadership of the Commissioner for Works and Transport, Mr. Solomon Zang, had met with stiff resistance from the Okada operators which led to a violent clash leaving several causalities. Nineteen-year-old Balaraba Mustapha, a housewife residing on Bauchi Road, will continue to thank […]

The implementation of the law by the state constituted Task Force under the leadership of the Commissioner for Works and Transport, Mr. Solomon Zang, had met with stiff resistance from the Okada operators which led to a violent clash leaving several causalities.

Nineteen-year-old Balaraba Mustapha, a housewife residing on Bauchi Road, will continue to thank her lucky stars as long as she lives for she happened to be among the survivors, when a stray bullet grazed her head as she was breast-feeding her baby in her room.

Despite the fact that Balaraba did not know what hit her when she collapsed, the sound she made when the bullet grazed her attracted her neighbours who came as she lay in a pool of her own blood, with her baby whom she fell on after fainting, crying under her weight.

Balaraba, whom our reporter met in a hospital when she went to remove the stitches on her head a few days after the incident, recounted her ordeal to Weekly Trust. “On the second day of the violence, between 11am and 12pm, we heard gunshots really close by. So we all went into our rooms.” As she felt relatively safe, she realized that her baby might be hungry so she started breastfeeding the tot, with the sound of gunshots at the background. A few minutes into her task, Balaraba felt a sharp and piercing pain on her head. “I did not hear the gunshot, I just felt the sharp pain on my head and I remember screaming before I blacked out.”

Balaraba did not only faint but also fell on her baby, even as blood gushed from her head wound. “When I woke up at the hospital, I was told that my neighbours went into my room when they heard me scream and my baby crying. That was when they rushed me to the nearest hospital.”

Weekly Trust found out that when Balaraba was taken to the hospital, she was operated on and shrapnel was removed from her head. Eyewitnesses in the area alleged that there was a confrontation between some youths and policemen around the barracks. They said the cops shot sporadically, probably leading to the incident.

Balaraba’s husband, Mustapha Idris, was on his way to Tilden Fulani (a small border town in Bauchi State but closer to Jos) when his attention was drawn to the incident. “Although they did not tell me what happened, I was at Tilden Fulani when I was asked to come back home because something had happened. It was when I reached home that I was told.” According to Idris, “I have spent more than N48, 000 on the operation and drugs and I am still spending money because she still goes for routine check-up.”

He added that their baby is still reeling from the shock of the incident. “Whenever he is sleeping, he wakes up crying”. Idris however, thanked God that the incident has not taken a deadly dimension which could have led to the death of either his wife or the baby or both. Balaraba’s doctor said she was lucky that the bullet did not penetrate further into her skull and that she is responding to treatment.