“I turned and asked them what they wanted from me and they said they wanted to follow me. I said follow me for what? What did I do to you that you want to follow me? Do I owe you money that you want to follow me? I told them to leave me alone. I don’t want my husband to hear that men were following me. I told them to leave me alone but they refused,” she recalled while narrating on her hospital bed the pathetic story of how her assailants gang-r*ped and plucked her eyes about a fortnight ago.
“Suddenly, they held my hands. I was struggling to free myself from their grip. They held my neck and I almost died. They twisted my hand, they opened my two legs and took turns to r*pe me. I was fainting. Then they brought an object-I don’t know whether it was a knife or not and they started removing my left eye. I screamed and tried to struggle but they removed my left eye. They started removing the other eye and I screamed harder. Then I heard a male voice saying this scream inside the bush is not normal and people came”, she stated, adding that that was the point her assailants took to their heels.
The victim said she knew two of the three men that attacked her. “One of them is called bullet but I don’t know the name of the other one. They use to go round the village aimlessly drinking alcohol”, she recalled.
Zainab, 30, a mother of four miraculously survived the double tragedy of being brutally r*ped by three men who later removed her eyes with a knife on March 1, 2014 at Lukshi village, Dass Local Government Area of Bauchi State. Zainab’s case becomes more pathetic because she is physically challenged. The victim, who is barely five feet tall, was said to have been struck by a mysterious illness when she was a child and was left almost incapacitated, with her left arm and leg almost useless. Although Zainab manages to move around by limping, walking for her is a herculean task.
Speaking with Saturday Sun from her hospital bed at the female ward of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, the victim attributed her miraculous survival to providence.
“Thank God some persons were passing and when they heard my screams, they rushed to where I was. Before they got to me, the men who attacked me had gone far. They pursued them but could not get them,” she recalled.
“They came back and were asking themselves ‘what do we do with this girl or is she a woman?’ One of them went to get a vehicle and they carried me inside. They came to inform my husband. They told him ‘they have finished your wife’. Then I was taken to Dass General Hospital and later Teaching Hospital, Bauchi,” she said.
How assailants were arrested
The Public Relations Officer of the Bauchi State police command, Haruna Mohammed said that the police did not waste time before swinging into action as soon as the news of the dastardly act reached them.
According to him: “Since then, the command embarked on aggressive manhunt of the suspects and it has yielded a positive result as all the three suspects were arrested and have confessed.
“They are Sabo Rabo alias bullet of Durr Katanga village, Bitrus Yakubu alias Japan of Dado village, Mohammed Sani alias Bamigboye of Durr Katanga village. The suspects will be charged to court as soon as investigation is concluded.” It was further learnt that the police has arrested a fourth suspect Usman Sabo who was picked up following alleged confessions of the initial three suspects that he was the proposed buyer of the plucked eyes.
Why we did it –Suspects
Bitrus is a tall, huge man with kola-stained teeth from Dado village in Dass local council area who mends broken domestic plastic buckets and bowls for a living. Looking unkempt, he claimed to be 45 years old but looked every inch in his late 50s. The father of four said he is separated from his wife. “My wife ran away with the children and I have been living alone,” he told Saturday Sun at the Bauchi police command headquarters where he is being kept with the three other suspects. The others are Sabo Rabo who is a 40- year-old native of Doukabuga village in Toro council area while Mohammed Sani is 30.
In his open confession, Bitrus said: “I am here because I committed a crime. We r*ped her and later removed her eyes. We were three. We did it at a spot called Kuzari. She asked us to give her some money and sleep with her. We went to a nearby bush and had s*x with her. It was only me and Sabo that did it. Mohammed Sani did not have s*x with her but he was the one that brought the idea that we should remove her eyes”
Bitrus said that after the two of them r*ped the woman, they planned to run away but Rabo warned that if they did, he would disclose what they did. “We had no choice but to comply. We used a knife to remove her eyes.” Mohammed Sani said it was temptation from the devil that pushed him into raping the woman and removing her eyes, adding: “Sabo told us that he had someone that would buy the eye.”
But Mohammed Sani denied the accusation. He said: “I did not ask them to remove her eyes. It was Japanese (Bitrus) who is our senior that said he discussed with one native doctor that if he removed the woman’s eyes, the native doctor will give us N1 million. They asked me being the strongest to hold the woman. That is after Sabo Bullet had slept with her. I held her down and Japanese (Bitrus) removed her left eye.”
Usman Sabo, 35, is the native doctor that Sabo said asked Bitrus to bring the eyes for a N1 million compensation. Sabo who sells herbs and married with two children told Saturday Sun: “I was sitting on my own when Bitrus came with the eye. He told me he had a woman’s eye but I didn’t see it. He asked me if I could prepare for him charms that will make him to disappear. I told him I am only a herbs seller. I don’t prepare charm to make people vanish at will. I have never done it. I only treat people who are sick whenever my services are required. When I told Bitrus that, he left in anger and later the matter came that I gave him N1million. Did I look like a millionaire? The eye is with Bitrus but he kept denying it.”
While denying being in possession of the victim’s eyes, Bitrus said the eyes are with Mohammed Sani. “The eye is not with me. It is with Sani. He promised to give us N1 million. I did not get a single kobo”, he insisted.
I’ll never forgive them –Zainab
Lying on her hospital bed at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Zainab cuts the picture of a pitiable woman who has come to a dead-end with nowhere to go as she writhes in pain. “What did I do to them to deserve this? I will never forgive them, Allah. I will never forgive them for what they have done to me. It is better if their eyes are removed just as they have removed mine. I need revenge. That is what my heart desires”, she pleaded.
Her husband, Mohammed Saleh could not control his emotions as he broke down. “I was in a friend’s house when the news of what happened to my wife reached me. In our tradition we do not accompany women to ceremonies. They go with their friends and relations that are women. When I realised it was getting dark, I went to my friend’s place. I met someone there who told me that my wife had gone home. I decided to go home. On reaching the house, I did not see her so I went out to look for her. I met someone on the way and on asking he replied, ‘do you know what happened to your wife?’ I followed him down to Luschi Primary School where I saw my wife in the pool of her own blood. It was terrible. That was how we rushed her to the hospital”, he added.
We need help –Family
Zainab has become the latest victim of the rising cases of r*pe and violent crimes in the state. Indeed, these crimes are now occurring with frightening dimension in the North-East. For instance, no fewer than 95 child r*pe cases have been reported in five northern states with Gombe having 50 cases, and Bauchi recording 11 cases, the Child Protection Network (CPN) findings revealed.
Again, Zainab is one of many reported cases of victim of suspected ritual killers who specialised in removing the eyes of their victims in a bid to get rich quick. The first known case of such was recorded in December 1985 when the victim Ibrahim Inuwa, a resident of Anguwan Doya in Bauchi, then 12 years of old, had his left eye removed and the right one destroyed in the process. Ibrahim, who miraculously survived the ordeal is blind till this day. Just like Zainab, Ibrahim’s assailant was arrested and jailed for 13 years and nine months. He served his sentence and became a free man. Zainab’s assailants would soon be charged to court.
“Where do I start from? I am just a poor farmer. How will I take care of the children and Zainab?”, asked Saleh, a peasant farmer who said he married Zainab two years ago after she lost her first husband. “We need help from government. Please, let them help my family,” he pleaded.
Her father, Qwayi Wakili from Lam said Zainab was the last born of his five children. Reacting to the fate that befell his daughter, the old man said: “I was at home sleeping when I was informed. I felt bad when I saw her. I was crying like a baby when I saw her. As a father I felt pained to see my child in this condition. They have killed my daughter. They have finished her”
SOURCE: The Sun
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