Who is protecting Lieutenant Odoh?

In the Weekly Trust of last week, we read the unfortunate and heartrending story of a young student of the NMS, whose good will gesture towards an official of the school caused him untold misery and eventually death. Late Hamza Dan’zumi was a 14-year-old JS 3 student when his father went to see him on […]

In the Weekly Trust of last week, we read the unfortunate and heartrending story of a young student of the NMS, whose good will gesture towards an official of the school caused him untold misery and eventually death. Late Hamza Dan’zumi was a 14-year-old JS 3 student when his father went to see him on official visiting day last January. According to the father, Malam  Muhammad Dan’azumi , his son had asked him specifically to go and meet the female officer known as Lieutenant Odoh because she is one of the officers in charge of students in the school. In his own words:
‘During a visiting day at NMS, my son introduced me to one Lieutenant Odoh, she is a female officer in the school. My late son wanted me to meet her because she is one of the officers in charge of students in the NMS. We exchanged pleasantries with her and I enjoined her to continue the good work of taking care of our children. To my surprise however, a day after that visit, my son called on phone to say that the lady has been harassing him. He said “Baba, that woman has been calling me stupid boy wherever she sees me. She would always say ‘Come here stupid boy, your father came but refused to give me anything.’
But this verbal harassment was apparently only the shape of things to come. In continuation of her persecution of the boy whose father failed to give her money, this corrupt military officer actually went into an exam hall where the young Dan’zumi was sitting for a paper and seized his answer sheet. Again the boy called and promptly reported the incident to his father. The father said he urged his son to exercise patience but collected the lady’s number in order to appeal on his son’s behalf; which he did, but to no avail.
Lieutenant Odoh’s harassment of the poor boy continued until it became so unbearable he had to escape from school one day. Again in the words of Hamza’s father ‘He went to spend the night in a mosque located at the NMS host community. The boy was found sleeping when worshippers turned out for dawn prayers. The sight of my son scared the worshippers until they confirmed that he was a student of NMS. The case was reported to the school authority but the commandant of the NMS was annoyed that the boy did not report his problem with the said female officer to the appropriate persons. As their practice demands, my son was locked up in their guardroom as punishment
‘But even in the guardroom, the female officer will go there and order the boy to be caned, at least 24 times at a time. When this news reached me coupled with the seizure of his examination papers, I decided to visit the school. At the school the commandant told me he was annoyed at the way my son refused to report his problems to the appropriate persons. They told me that they will not release my son from the guardroom until the day of Easter break. Having heard that, I left the school for my place of residence, Kano.’
What I find most amazing about this whole thing is why there was no attempt to do anything about the main cause of Hamza Dan’azumi’s distress. In other words why did the commandant not see it fit to call and confront Lieutenant Odoh in order to verify what the young man alleged? Why was it more important to punish a boy who was forced to sneak out of school to escape harassment than to investigate the main source of his troubles, a heartless and corrupt female officer? This unscrupulous woman obviously knows that she could get away with anything at NMS, otherwise she wouldn’t have followed the boy’s guardroom incarceration with severe beatings even while knowing that his father and the school authority were both aware of the case.
I am particularly irked by the way the commandant kept saying that he was annoyed the boy did not report the matter to the appropriate persons. Maybe the late Hamza did not, probably he was too afraid to, but in spite of that the commandant got to know about the boy’s plight anyway, wasn’t that enough to make him act decisively on the matter? Why was it so difficult for the commandant to summon the untouchable Ms Odoh? What makes such a corrupt person a sacred cow at NMS? Anyway today, an innocent teenager had died at the hands of the very people entrusted with his training and safety. All because some corrupt Nigerians have been assigned into offices of responsibility where nonetheless they cannot contain their corrupt tendencies.
Malam Muhammad Dan’azumi learnt of his son’s tragic end deceptively when he went to pick him up for the Easter break on March 27th. On arrival at the school he had asked about his son’s whereabouts but the officers there had kept him waiting without any information about his son. It was while in the waiting room that he recalled a phone call he received from this same Lieutenant Odoh, the day before, asking him whether his son had returned home. Dan’azumi had reminded her that his son was in their guardroom but she replied that he had not been seen since Sunday March 24th. What surprised Malam Dan’zumi about this call, he told Weekly Trust, was the fact that he had tried several times to talk to Lt. Odoh in order to plead for leniency for his son, after his visit to the commandant yielded no positive result but she never answered his calls. Even text messages he sent to her were unanswered. Then suddenly, a day to the Easter break she was there on phone asking about the same boy.
After waiting for about three hours, an officer who had claimed to be looking for young Hamza Dan’azumi came and said the boy could not be found but that the corpse of a youth who had been found at the riverside by the police could not be identified by both the staff and students of NMS as his son’s. According to Dan’azumi ‘By the time they showed me the pictures, I immediately recognised the corpse as my son’s and we went to the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, where the corpse was kept, for further confirmation. After that episode, I realised that the officers were only playing me around, they knew it was my son’s corpse. At that moment I requested that an autopsy be conducted because the corpse was bearing some wounds. The autopsy has been conducted and we are waiting for the result.’
This very courageous father is obviously trying to rise above the pain of his loss in order to find out what really killed his son. But the latest on this autopsy is that the hospital management had asked him to liaise with the police in order to find out the result. In other words he will not be given the autopsy result directly from the hospital, he will have to collect whatever the police deem fit to give him. He might end up with a doctored version of whatever was the actual result. In our very corrupt nation anything is possible if some people’s tracks have to be covered. The NMS authorities and particularly the untouchable Lt. Odoh will all be trying hard to save their skins against a possible murder trial. But justice must be done in the case of the unfortunate death of Hamza Muhammad Dan’azumi.  Otherwise, we have further proof that the country’s anti-corruption drive is really a farce.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Col Azubuike Ihejirika must listen to Hamza’s father’s passionate appeal for a thorough investigation into how the young man met his end at the hands of an inhuman female officer and a negligent school authority. It is so hard to believe that a woman, naturally endowed with motherly affection and tenderness can get so driven by greed and corruption that she can inflict such hardship on a boy in her care. Though the school authority has this spin that Hamza died at the riverside where he went with a friend, the friend, one Mubarak Muttaqa Ahmad has denied any knowledge of how or where Hamza died. He categorically said he did not go anywhere with his late school mate.
The bruises on Hamza’s body tell the story of a boy physically tortured.  Even if Hamza died trying to escape from school, the school management and Lt. Odoh still have a case to answer. One for torturing him, the other for turning a blind eye when the dastardly deed was being done.