Pastor
Mike Agbahime is finally speaking out after the chief magistrate,
Muhammad Jibril on the order of the Attorney General of Kano State
discharged the suspects charged with the murder of his wife, Bridget
Agbahime.
Agbahime
called on the Presidency, Senate and the judiciary to compel the Kano
State judiciary to re-arrest the suspects and charge them to a High
Court in Abuja as he has lost confidence in the state judiciary.
The
74-year-old trader from Imo State was brutally attacked and killed by a
Muslim mob over alleged blasphemy after she refused to allow a Muslim
worshiper perform ablution in from of her shop. Five suspects, Dauda
Ahmed, Zubairu Abdullahi,Abdulmumeen Mustafa, Abdullahi Abubakar and
Musa Abdullahi were charged before the Kano Magistrate court on a
four-count allegation of inciting disturbance, culpable homicide, joint
act and mischief.
In
a shocking twist, the court discharged the suspect and terminated the
case because "there was no case to answer as all the suspects were
innocent"
In an interview with Gibson Achonu for Sahara Reporters, the
senior pastor working at the Deeper Life Bible Church, Kano narrated how
his wife was murdered.
"I was in one of our shops on Thursday, June 2, 2015. We usually closed by 3:30 pm and from the shop, we go to church. But there was one Dauda Ahmed, who had formed the habit of washing his legs (ablution) for prayers in front of my wife’s shop.
He did that each time he wanted to say his prayers. He would leave his shop, which was a bit far from my wife’s own, to do that. We reported the matter to the owner of the shop, one Alhaji Mustapha. Mustapha warned him many times to desist from doing that. He told him (Dauda) that if he wanted to do (ablution), he should do it in his shop. Also, the President of the Hausa Plastic Association in Kofar Wambai market, Kano, Alhaji Aminu, also warned him when the incident was reported to him. Aminu even told Dauda that they (market union) would take him to court if he did not change. He (Dauda) continued. Dauda was also fond of putting his goods in front of my wife’s shop in the early hours of the day
"Before she got to the shop, he would occupy the frontage of the shop with his goods. Whenever he was told to stop doing that, he (Dauda) would start uttering abusive words. On the day my wife was murdered, a call came from one of our church members (who also has a shop in the market) while I was waiting for my wife to leave the shop so that we could go to the church. He told me on phone that some Hausa people were making trouble with my wife. I asked him why and he answered, “I don’t know.” It was then I asked him to give my wife his phone so that I could talk with her. Do you know that the (Hausa mob) did not allow the man to give her the phone? It was then that I quickly packed my wares to go and find out the problem. As this was going on, I met the same man who was with my wife at the market. He said, “Daddy, don’t worry, they have left her (my wife).” Later, my wife appeared. She told me that it was the same Dauda that did ablution in the front of her shop. She said that she told Dauda, “Why won’t you allow me to finish packing before you start pouring your water for ablution in my shop?”
"After telling Dauda this, she told me that he held her hand and asked her, “Mekai fatah?” This phrase means “What did you just say?” My wife asked him, “What right do you have to hold my hand?” She asked him to leave her hand. She stated that if he did not leave her, that she would use one of the plastic products in the shop to break his head. Immediately Dauda left her, he started shouting 'Allah Akbar.'"
The Mbaitolu, Imo State man and his late wife went to report Dauda to the owner of the shop, one Alhaji Mustapha.
"Alhaji Mustapha ushered us in. He (Mustapha) told us to go and come back on Saturday, June 4, 2016, so as to speak with Dauda and settle the disagreement. His office was upstairs. But as we were leaving through the staircase, we saw a teeming mob with weapons. Alhaji Mustapha tried to disperse them. He told them in Hausa that he would resolve the matter the next Saturday. They started abusing him, throwing stones at him. They called him kafir, meaning somebody who does not know Allah. When Mustapha saw that the mob was getting more aggressive, he opened his office, told us to go in and locked it. When they saw that Alhaji Mustapha had let us in and locked his office, they continued shouting Allah Akbar. As they were shouting, many others joined them."
Mustapha slumped when he saw the aggressive crowd baying for blood but not before he called the police.
"It is painful to tell you that Alhaji Mustapha, seeing how aggressive they were, slumped. But before he slumped, he had called the police. The Divisional Police Officer of the area came in with two other policemen. The three could not calm the angry mob. The mob climbed up in their numbers, broke the window, and jumped in.
Asked about what he was doing with his wife while all that was going on, he said:
We were praying to God to save the situation. When they later entered the office where we were hiding, they hit my wife on the head with very heavy iron objects and she immediately slumped and died. Having completed their mission, they all went back. They did not touch me.
"The DPO later came in after my wife was killed and asked me, “Is she dead?” He was the one who told the other policemen to bring the police vehicle so that they could take her corpse to the mortuary. When they (mob) heard ‘mortuary’, they reinforced. When the DPO saw that they were coming in again in greater number, he called the area commander, complaining that they had killed my wife, adding that their own lives were in danger.
On the response of the area commander, Agbahime said:
"The area commander deployed more policemen in the area. They arrived immediately and started shooting canisters into the air to disperse the crowd. It was the policemen who helped me to put her corpse inside the vehicle to the mortuary. The mob continued to throw stones at the vehicle as we were going to deposit her corpse in the morgue. Not satisfied, the mob moved to my shop and vandalized it. They also smashed my car, which I bought not up to a year before the incident, to pieces.
Read the rest of the interview on Sahara Reporters
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