They were last seen alive, according to their parents, in the morning of Friday, May 21 after breakfast. The vehicle in which their bodies were found, was parked a short distance from their respective homes. The car belongs to an Igbo businessman, Cyril Emehelu Chinedu, who settled in a house that was once occupied by his parents in the area. Emehelu, until that incident, parks his car in front of the one-storey building where he lives with his wife and child.
Death of Na’ibawa kids raises more questions
Malam Muktar Musa Ahmad, the father of Abba, recalled that the family had barely cleared its breakfast table when his child dashed out of the house on the fateful Friday. Until he subsequently left for his teaching job, their little kid did not set his foot again into the house, he said. In the father absence, Abba’s mother sensed something strange about their little child’s unusual prolonged stay outside and decided to act. As the worried mother was trying to establish the whereabouts of her son, another search party visited the house to find out if Khalifa was hanging out there with his close friend, Abba.
On realizing the magnitude of the situation, the mother called her husband on phone and notified about the development. “I rushed back home at about 11am and joined in the search for the children. We went looking for them in various homes, reported to police stations and ward heads and announced in the local radio stations, but all did not yield results.”
The corpses of the missing children were discovered inside Emehule’s car after he contracted an almajiri to wash the vehicle as he prepared to drive to church for the Sunday service. The 34-year-old businessman explained that he usually gets the car cleaned every Sunday morning, for him to attend early morning service. “On that day, I called one [of the boys] at about 6am to wash my car. The vehicle is always covered and everybody in the neighbourhood can testify to that. But before the boy started washing the car, I perceived a strong odour nearby and saw flies around the car. When I removed the car cover, I was shocked by what I saw, looking like a human hand. I could not stand to look again and quickly covered the car and rushed to the police station and reported,” Emehelu explained.
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Emehelu said he and his wife have had running battles in the past trying to stop children playing around the car. “I normally lock my car, but how the children got in is a mystery.”
While giving an update on the matter at the Kano Police Command headquarters on Monday, Deputy Commissioner of Police Lawal Tanko, averred that the children could have gone into the car playing hide-and-seek and got trapped. The police officer disclosed that preliminary investigations have shown no sign of use of force that could have led to the conclusion that the kids were murdered. Earlier on Sunday, the command’s public relations officer had disclosed that the corpses have been sent to the hospital for autopsy, saying only the examination will give a conclusive picture of the cause of the children’s death. But speculations about ritual motives are making the rounds in the area.
Meanwhile, in an apparent move to forestall a breakdown of law and order, armed policemen have been deployed to the street. A school teacher, Ibrahim Musa Gwammaja, who lives in the same house with the parents of late Abba, while advising parents to watch the movements of their kids, expressed disbelief at the possibility of the dead children locking themselves in the car. “One will be surprised to be told that the children opened the car that was covered with car cover, entered inside and locked themselves. It is intriguing,” he stated. A Ward Head in Na’ibawa, Alhaji Ilyasu Isa Maikalwa, told Weekly Trust that cases of missing children are common in his domain, saying a number of such cases have been reported to him, while he has also reunited several missing children with their families.
Like some members of the community, the parents of the dead children are also suggesting that many questions need to be answered. Mallam Talle Na’ibawa told Weekly Trust that the only thing that can console them over the death of their children is for the law to take its course. “I have handed everything into the hands of the authorities. Therefore, they should investigate and do justice,” the father said.
The result of the postmortem is yet to be released at the time of filing this report. Also, the principal suspect, Emehelu, was still being held at the state CID, while his family has moved to his brother’s house.
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