I began to shudder and shiver when I started reading the story of the multiple murders in Kano. My skin began to crawl when I began to discern how a woman and all her children died at the hands of a supposed relative. It was hard to believe. This person entered her house and wiped her and all her children off the face of the earth. Unspeakable! Unbelievable! Incredible!
As a crime channel aficionado, I have watched numerous editions of “I Almost Got Away with It”, “Murder Lives Here”, and “Paranormal”, among other programmes. These multiple murders in Kano, in my mind, have to have come straight out of a crime movie, even though most of the programmes on the crime channel were all true.
The culprit in these Kano murders and his co-travellers have burdened me over the last couple of days. What was he thinking? What conversations did he have with the others who went with him? What kind of planning did Umar Auwal have with the others to make them kill a woman and her six children?
The Dorrayo Chiranchi area of Kano was left in turmoil after Auwal and some of his friends decided to take the life of his aunt, Fatima Abubakar, and her six children in broad daylight. What demon can possess a man in this manner to lead him to this dastardly act? As stories about the suspect continue to emanate, his own father has said the state should execute him, as he was “useless to society.” Mallam Auwal narrated other hideous acts by his son, including the murder of his own younger sister, whose eyes he plucked out. With these stories making the rounds and other murders he allegedly committed, how is this man walking around free with so much confidence that he was able to now kill his aunt and her six children?
The father of the suspect has dissociated himself from his son, urging a quick execution, as keeping him would be to feed him on taxpayers’ money. Unprecedented in cruelty is how an Islamic scholar, Sheikh Daurawa, has described the killing of a mother and all her children while her husband was away.
In the meantime, a Kano-based legal practitioner, Mubarak Abubakar, has faulted the call for speedy execution as unconstitutional, calling for a court of competent jurisdiction to try the case.
Outrage everywhere! Smashing a sewing machine on his victim’s head and using clubs and machetes to kill all of Fatima’s children, who were between the ages of 17 and 1 and a half years old.
I have sat most nights wondering where the world is going. An aunt! Sewing machine! A smashing, beating up kids till they passed. A bloody scene! How?
Were they on drugs? This certainly cannot be normal. May God save us… Amen.
