Kano bride-to-be killed by soldier, family insists

Two women were allegedly shot dead at a checkpoint last Sunday by men of the Joint Task Force (JTF) operating in Kano. One of them, Aisha Lawal, 20, was also in the company of her brother, who said the tragic events began to unfold after being flagged down by a combined team of soldiers and […]

Two women were allegedly shot dead at a checkpoint last Sunday by men of the Joint Task Force (JTF) operating in Kano. One of them, Aisha Lawal, 20, was also in the company of her brother, who said the tragic events began to unfold after being flagged down by a combined team of soldiers and policemen at a checkpoint along Dorayi Sabon Titi Road outside Kano city. Muhammad Lawal, late Aisha’s brother, told Weekly Trust that he sustained a gunshot wound. At their family residence, he gave a blow-by-blow account of how the tragic incident unfolded, beginning by saying six members of the family were returning home from an area called Zawaciki. “Around 7:30pm after visiting a patient at Zawaciki, we met a long vehicular queue at a checkpoint manned by soldiers. We kept moving forward until we were near them. The soldiers stopped the vehicle in front of us and asked the driver and passengers to disembark for a search.”

 

Muhammad continued: “One soldier then asked a passenger to open his bag for a search, but he did not comply. After about 10 minutes, the soldier left them at the spot and went back to continue searching other vehicles. But when the driver noticed that the soldier’s attention was not on him, he asked the passengers to get back into the car and they sped off. At that point, the soldier who was controlling traffic on the other lane fired a shot and immediately other soldiers joined him, shooting indiscriminately. Without wasting time, the soldier that started the shooting, came face-to-face with me (the driver), and fired into our car. A bullet hit me in the hand. Another shot destroyed the car’s wind screen and pierced the dashboard. When I realized he was bent on harming me, I sped away.”

“He then went behind us and continued to fire at the car. It was while he was firing the shots at our rear that my sister took a bullet. The shot went through the rear bumper and broke right into her back,” Muhammad said, adding that at first, none of them knew she had been hit. “Even when she began to cry, no-one thought it was a gunshot wound. When I asked her if she was OK, she said ‘Maybe I’ve been shot.’ I then assured her that it was not possible.”

Muhammad recalled that the assurance did little to soothe his sister, who kept complaining of stomach ache. “While on our way home, our mother put a hand on Aisha’s back only to feel blood. And she quickly confirmed: ‘yes she has been shot!’” From that moment, they started a race to save her life. “We quickly dashed home, picked our dad and headed for hospital. We first went to a private hospital, but were told there was no doctor around. We rushed to a government one, where we were asked to produce a police report. But as we explained what happened to them, they quickly referred us to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) for scanning. But just about ten minutes after we got to AKTH, Aisha died,” he said.

Muhammad showed Weekly Trust round his father’s bullet-riddled official, showed our correspondent the bloodstains on his late sister’s side on the back seat. When asked if he had infuriated the soldiers possibly by attempting to evade the checkpoint, he denied doing such, recounting that it was the other driver, not him, that triggered the attack. He said the JTF men did not bother to go after them after they fled the checkpoint.

Apart from Aisha, eyewitnesses said they saw security men moving away the corpse of an unidentified old woman, who was also believed to have been killed by the soldiers.  They said another woman was seen bleeding profusely from an injury she allegedly sustained in the thigh, during the attack.

But the JTF in Kano, through its Public Relations Officer Lieutenant Ikedichi Iweha, denied that their personnel were involved in the attack, attributing the killing of Aisha and another woman at the checkpoint to gunmen who were trying to evade security men. In an email statement sent Wednesday, Iweha stated that: “Contrary to the report, criminal elements in their bid to evade a JTF check point at Kwanar Madobi general area on 2 April 2012 at about 2000hrs, opened fire indiscriminately to scare and to maim innocent members of the society. The JTF would have lost men at that check point. While the JTF regrets the loss of lives, it is not responsible for the unfortunate loss. The JTF takes particular care in all its operations to extricate all members of the civil populace especially women and children for whom they are deployed to protect.”

In a swift reaction to the claims by JTF, the deceased’s family said the task force officials were being economical with the truth, insisting that soldiers, not gunmen killed Aisha. Muhammad said he did not know of any gunmen who fired at the scene other that the task force officials that stopped their car.

Kano State Police Command has confirmed that it was investigating the incident. Public Relations Officer, ASP Musa Magaji Majia told Weekly Trust that the commissioner of police has ordered an investigation. “We’ll fish out the culprits, so that they can be appropriately punished,” he said.

While sympathizers continued to flock the family’s residence to offer their condolences, the vehicle involved in the incident, which has been parked near the house, has also been pulling its own crowd of spectators. The deceased’s father, Alhaji Muhammad Lawal Taura, who is the Director Personnel Management (DPM) of Miga Local Government, said late Aisha’s marriage was scheduled for the end of April. He told Weekly Trust that the state police command has contacted him on the matter, indicating their resolve to investigate it. “To me, I have left everything to God, believing that her time was due,” he said. “She was not the only one in the car. There was her mother and her siblings, all of whom survived. That shows that it was the will of Allah. But whatever evil a man does, it will surely come back to haunt him.”