By Emeka Alex Duru
Since the pathetic story of Hanifa Abubakar, the five-year-old child that was killed by the proprietor of her school in Kano broke, it has been difficult to get over the gory details.
Between the cruel manner in which she was killed and the innocence she manifested in a video clip of her interaction with relatives while alive, I do not know which evokes more tears. In the clip, she was her natural self, free and angelic. Let’s have a recap of the video interaction, rendered in her native Hausa Language.
In it, Hanifa was holding a cup which she boasted to flaunt any time she was married as a gift from her mother. A female voice followed up with a question on when she would marry. “Tomorrow, I would marry”, was her answer. Who would marry you, she was asked. “My Daddy (Baba na)!” she answered. When people around her laughed at her naivety, she emphasised, “He (my father) is the one”. This was all I could pick from my smattering understanding of the language. Those with stronger proficiency may grasp the import of the interaction, better.
The encounter reminded me of a similar episode with my daughter when she was younger. We had dropped off my wife at Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, in one of her trips outside the country. While we bade her farewell, I noticed that my daughter, was not amused. On our way home, she said, “Daddy, don’t mind Mummy. If she travels again, I will be your wife”. That was innocence at its best. I didn’t want to add to her anger with a negative answer. I simply concurred, knowing that she was speaking from a clean heart.
It can only take the purity of an angel for the free-mindedness of the answers from Hanifa and my daughter in the instances above. I recreate that encounter with my daughter, now a teenager, whenever I want to tease her. Hanifa will not have such opportunity. Her case is a closed one, a sad end of hope, a painful death of the innocent!
Everything about Hanifa remains a puzzle; her life, her beauty and her tragic end. She was killed by the proprietor of her school, Nobel Kids Academy, Kwanar Dakata in Nassarawa Local Government Area of Kano State.
The proprietor, Abdulmalik Tanko, abducted Hanifa on December 2, last year and took her to his house. He later contacted her family demanding a ransom of N6 million. Despite collecting N100, 000 as part of the ransom, he still went ahead to kill the innocent girl. The police arrested him while trying to collect the remaining part of the N6m ransom he demanded.
The manner Hanifa was kidnapped and killed looked more like scenes in horror movies. Tanko dismembered the little girl after killing her with rat poison he bought at N100 (some say, N10) and then buried her remains in a shallow grave on the school premises.
This is the extent life has lost its meaning in Nigeria. If a 34-year-old man, a supposed mentor, who was paid to teach and protect Hanifa could turn out her abductor and killer, it demonstrates the level some of us have descended in anarchy and nastiness.
While the emotion generated by the Hanifa case lingers, another girl, Zuwaira Gambo has been reportedly murdered in Kano. The disclosure was made by the Kano governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, while playing host to the National Human Rights Commission. Gambo was 12 years.
The two ugly incidents resonate in various forms in other parts of the country. The details of how Timothy Olagoke, a Master of business Administration (MBA) student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, who was killed in a hotel he lodged in Ife, while preparing for his exams, are still pouring out, with fingers pointing at those that he paid to accommodate him. Four youths were paraded the other day in Ogun State for severing the head a girl-friend to one of them and cooking it for money-making. In Imo, a beastly kid was nabbed trying to butcher his mother for rituals.
These are indications of a society in moral decadence. The overtly religious ones would say they are signs of the end time. But in reality, they reflect the speed and tempo at which the weak and the vulnerable are becoming easy targets for demented souls who believe that the only way to acquire wealth or power is to kill others for ritual purposes.
One of the legends in explaining the fall of the Kanem Borno is the high level of immorality in the empire that attracted the wrath of the land on the people. The Bible equally makes reference to the loose life in Sodom and Gomorrah that made God destroy the city. Nigeria is making steady march on that piteous path.
There is no more a distinction between the sacred and the profane. It is all about money, no matter the source, no matter how it is acquired! The family, the society and the state are all guilty in the decay. Questions are no longer raised on sources of wealth.
On my recent visit to the village, I was assaulted with sight of loose gangs without identifiable means of livelihood cruising around in big cars. When I asked what they were doing as to own such big automobiles, I noticed the people around looking at me as one out of tune with the realities of the day. I was considered naïve – a ‘Mugu’, in street lingo! One guy in brash riposte, simply dropped the information (in a manner of, ‘if you like, take it or leave it’) that, “Ha a pita go ihe” (loosely translated; ‘they have dialed out something’ – in apparent celebration that the boys had hit it big in internet fraud).
I found it difficult to understand how marginally literate minds who could not make it at secondary school level, would suddenly be sophisticated to outsmart the Europeans or Americans and make it that easy using computer and other hi-tech facilities. But that is where we are all guilty, one way or another.
We are in a mess, really. I don’t know where we can start to address the situation. Many things have gone wrong. When some artists who play roles of ritualists in movies actually live big in real life and flaunt their wealth, the youths look at them and want to have a piece of action. When presumed religious leaders advertise their private jets on social media, the youths take note. When parents reserve their blessings for the ‘wise kids’ that had made it, other children want to be recognised. When the society, the church, confer the highest titles on the ‘smart boys’ in the communities, you get what we are seeing. The angles are many. They are saddening and disgusting!
The failed leadership at all levels of the national life has a lot in explaining the moral decay in the land. In particular, the absence of clear-cut leadership recruitment processes, shares much in the morass.
It is this laissez faire leadership selection culture that throws up the worst of us as the leaders. In the absence of defined principles in our political culture, men and women of repute, have been shoved aside by characters of questionable credentials. These, sadly, are the models the youths look up to.
Like the politicians, they want to make it at all costs. You can see why we have many of Abdulmalik Tankos prowling on the innocent.
To get out of the situation, Nigeria needs a moral rebirth in all facets. We cannot continue like this.
*DURU is the Editor, TheNiche Newspapers, Lagos. (08054103327, nwaukpala@yahoo.com)