How much does the corpse of a five-year-old weigh?

It is remarkable in a country where hundreds are killed in a matter of hours (take the recent Zamfara massacres for instance) without the appropriate outrage, that the death of a five-year-old would elicit such an outpour of grief across the country.

Hanifa Abubakar has become a recognised name. Her kidnap early in December last year from an Islamic school she attended by a man in a tricycle triggered Nigerians to share photos of her, in her floral ankara, tongue sticking out, eyes staring at the camera. It was that photo that spoke to people, the sheer beauty and innocence captured by someone’s lens that stayed with most. On social media, this picture was shared with lamentations over her kidnapping and sincere hopes and prayers for her recovery.

In the troubling times we are going through as a country, it was a moment of hope—hope that this particular story would have a happy ending and that the world would get to see Hanifa’s smiling face.

Sadly, after her death, a short video of her emerged, in which she was saving a cup for her wedding day—and naïve and innocent as she was, she proclaimed she was going to marry her father and stared into the camera, as if daring the person behind it, laughing all the time, to challenge her. She was sweet and funny.

Unfortunately, that candle of hope flickered and died last week. The man who had kidnapped her, the owner of the school she attended, demanded a ransom of five million naira. He was picked up after he had gone to claim the ransom money for a child he had murdered long before.

How Abdulmalik Tanko, the murderer, expected to get away with this crime is hard to imagine. The fact that Hanifa only agreed to enter his tricycle based on the recognition that this was her “uncle” the proprietor of her school and someone she trusted to deliver her to her parents in one piece seemed to go over his head.

It, however, seemed clear that he had no intentions of ever returning the child, which informed his decision to poison her, watch her die and bury her in the school ground she had played in with her friends, his other students.

Everything about this crime is a head scratch. Abdulmalik Tanko confessed he was in a financial crisis. His school that had over a hundred students had seen COVID-19 and other things bring down the figure to around 40. Yet, he had opened another branch of the school. The school building was rented and he was owing about N700,000 in rent. He seemed like a practical man, this Abdulmalik, judging from the interview clips, and his practical solution to this problem was to kidnap one of his students and milk her parents for ransom.

For some reason, he decided Hanifa was a good choice. He made several attempts to kidnap her, sent some hired goons he had promised N1, 000 to but Hanifa would not follow them because she had been told never to trust strangers. In the end, Abdulmalik decided he would do it himself since he was not a stranger.

Of the N100,000  he was able to coax out of the parents, he used N71, 000 to pay some off his teachers. Even by the time this money was paid, Hanifa was already dead because he said he killed her within a week of her abduction. This is all information Abdulmalik volunteered. He is very forthcoming with details, this man, this father of three daughters. He knows what is coming and he has accepted his fate. He is volunteering information, he said, so the court could implement the justice it needs to implement.

If the wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, would have her way, Abdulmalik would receive the maximum sentence for his crime. She had shared on her verified Instagram page the preaching of an Islamic cleric, Malam Abdallah Gadon Kaya, asking for a public execution of Abdulmalik. The First Lady wrote, in her commentary, an endorsement and support for this call.

No doubt many Nigerians share this sentiment. They want Abdulmalik dead and they want to know that is done. Some even want to see it being done.

Yes, Abdulmalik has been arraigned in court and Nigerians would follow this case with keen interest, as they had followed Maryam Sanda’s. Our justice system is notoriously slow and our attention span is incredibly short. But a quick conclusion of this case is vital for closure. Not only for the parents, heartbroken as they are and grieving but for the whole country that had pitched its tent behind this family. #justiceforHanifa has been trending on social media. It is because Nigerians want justice for Hanifa and they want it now. It will not bring her back but it will give all of us, her parents most especially, a sense that her death had not been shoved under the rug and that her murderer did not get away with it.

The Kano State government has decided Hanifa’s death would be a turning point. They have decided on the basis of this crime to revoke the licence of all private schools in the state and have them relicensed. At first, I admit, I had assumed that would mean the closure of all private schools in the state pending the conclusion of the process. I am relieved that would not be the case. Still, it is a knee-jerk reaction. It did not have to take the death of a child to ensure that things are done right.

The education system has been so taken for granted that schools that do not have safe and conducive spaces for learning, do not have qualified teachers who have been licensed to operate. It makes one question how these licences are obtained in the first instance. From the images we saw of Noble Kids Academy, where Hanifa schooled, was murdered and buried, it does not look like a great space for learning.

But the effort should not stop at reissuing licences to private schools, because technically, it was not the school system that caused Hanifa’s death but the perverted actions of a man who happened to own a school. The effort should be expanded to improve child safety across the country. And every available data about the growing threat to child safety in the world shows that children are often more in danger by the people they know—family members, family friends and teachers, and in spaces they think they are safest—homes, schools and in their neighbourhoods.

While the world is focused on Hanifa’s tragic death, the police in the same Kano also arrested one Auwalu Abdulrashid, 21, for the murder of 13-year-old Zuwaira (of unstated surname).

In July 2021, Zuwaira was going about hawking when Auwalu called her, asked her to go into an uncompleted building in which he claimed to be doing some work so he could buy what she was selling. The moment she set down her tray, he ceased her by her hijab and slit her throat. He stuffed her into a shallow grave and called her parents, demanding a million naira in ransom.

By the time they had negotiated the figure down to N400, 000, the victim’s remains were discovered. Auwalu had been on the run since until now. The irony is that this same person had kidnapped the victim’s three-year-old brother and had released him only after collecting N100,000 in ransom. There may be no hashtags for Zuwaira, there is no known photo of her. There doesn’t even seem to be a surname for her listed in the police report but there was a life that was smothered at a tender age, there is justice yearning to be done and there is a desperate need to protect our children wherever they may be.

While the president has offered condolences to Hanifa’s family and the federal government has assured that justice will be done, there should be a clear strategy to protect the most vulnerable members of our community and that strategy can’t come soon enough.

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, [email protected]