Lagos, Nigeria | PHOTO: INQUIRER.net stock photo
KANO, Nigeria — The murder of a five-year-old Nigerian girl has sparked outrage in the country’s mostly Muslim north, with even the president’s wife supporting a hardline cleric’s call for justice.
Hanifa Abubakar was kidnapped for a ransom demand of six million naira ($14,500) last month and later killed with rat poison and buried in a shallow grave in the northern city of Kano, according to local police.
Kano police say Abdulmalik Mohammed Tanko, the owner of the Noble Kids school she attended, was arrested last week and had confessed to abducting Hanifa to demand a ransom but later killing her with poison.
Tanko and two suspected accomplices were charged in court on Tuesday with kidnapping, criminal conspiracy and homicide, said Kano police spokesman Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa.
Several child abductions in conservative northern Nigeria have left parents worried and some children fearful of going out, residents said.
“There have been child abductions in Kano but none was as callous and shocking as this one. A teacher abducting and poisoning his pupil to death is just unbelievable,” said Abdullahi Ahmed Rufa’i, a local social worker.
“I have warned my children to be wary of anyone once they are outside the house.”
Over the weekend, angry local residents set fire to the girl’s former school, an AFP correspondent said.
According to Kano police, Tanko conspired with two other suspects to kidnap the girl and demand a ransom from her father.
When Hanifa recognized him, the suspect is accused of feeding her poison and then later burying her body, the police statement said.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife Aisha has supported a call from well-known ultra-conservative cleric Sheikh Abdallah Umar Gadonkaya, also known as Malam, for the suspect to be executed as a deterrent.
“We support Malam’s verdict,” the first lady wrote on Instagram, with a video of the sheikh’s demand under the hashtag #JusticeforHanifa.
The UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed also called for justice.
“Outraged and deeply saddened by the senseless death of Hanifa Abubakar,” the former Nigerian minister wrote on Twitter.
“Justice must be done for Hanifa and all girls who suffer these atrocities. Our hearts and prayers are with her family—may she rest in peace.”
Northwestern Nigeria has also struggled with a wave of mass abductions for ransom at schools over the last year, carried out by criminal gangs known locally as bandits.
“My eight-year-old child has not left home since the discovery of Hanifa’s decomposing body and the arrest of her teacher,” said Mannir Haruna, a textile merchant in Kano’s Kantin Kwari market.
“He is afraid to set his foot out of the house.”