From Salim Umar Ibrahim & Faith Sunday (Kano)
The abduction of Hanifa Abubakar, a five-year-old girl at Kawaji community in Yankaba area of Kano metropolis earlier in the week has highlighted the vulnerability of minors to abduction in Nigeria’s commercial centre with the community being one of the most prone areas where such criminalities are recorded.
During a visit to the area by Daily Trust, the community is still trying to grapple with the resurgence of the menace, which residents admitted has been plaguing the area for a while.
Hanifa was reportedly abducted on her way home from an Islamiyya school in the company of other pupils.
She was reportedly whisked away with a commercial tricycle, locally called Adaidata Sahu or Keke Napep.
Findings by Daily Trust revealed that these ubiquitous commercial tricycles, which replaced commercial motorcycles, are now the means through which many of such criminalities (including phone snatching) are perpetrated in Kano city.
While efforts to speak with the parents of Hanifa Abubakar were not successful as they were still mourning the fate of their child, one of their relatives, Mubarak Abdullahi Musa, told Daily Trust that as at Thursday, the whereabouts of Hanifa remained unknown.
“I am her uncle. She is still missing and no information has yet gotten to us on her whereabouts. No one has called.
“The news of her abduction has really touched us, being the only child of her parents. We are still praying for God’s intervention but it’s sad,” he said.
Unknowingly, Hanifa was not the only target of the kidnappers on the said day as a businessman and resident of Yankaba area of Nassarawa local government in Kano metropolis, Muhammad Abubakar Muhammad, narrated how his wife and three children narrowly escaped being kidnapped, perhaps from the same group of kidnappers that abducted Hanifa.
“It was supposed to be a journey of around N300 but the Keke rider said they should just pay N100. Few minutes into their journey, she heard him answer a phone call saying in Hausa ‘an samu’ – meaning, ‘I got it’, adding that they should meet at a particular meeting point which she wasn’t conversant with and had forgotten the exact name of the place.
“The moment she heard that, she became suspicious of the rider and instructed him to drop them. He refused, saying that he must take her to the place she said she was going to. When she insisted and threatened to shout, he stopped and she alighted along with her children who went out first.
“As she was about exiting, he zoomed off, without waiting to collect his money.
“The eldest among my three children is five years old and if you sit her down with the abducted Hanifa Abubakar, you will certainly say they are twins. A situation that made my wife more devastated when she saw the news of Hanifa’s abduction,” he said.
Umaru Adamu is the district head of Kawaji and he narrates how they have been witnessing the cases and the measures they are taking to curtail the menace.
“Two years ago, we were able to arrest someone who abducted a child and he confesses that he is a resident of Kawaji and has been abducting our children, and taking them to the East to sell them.
“He was the one who was traced by security operatives and uncovered the Kano nine missing children out of which three were from here.
“The recent one is the case of Hanifa who was taken by a Keke Napep rider just less than a week ago.”
Adamu said the community has taken measures in counselling parents to caution their children against being friendly or going close to a stranger.
He said they also had a meeting after the recent incident with the Emir of Kano and the emir reiterated the measures they have taken.
“For the school teachers, we also asked them to be observant of who picks a child from school. “
Ahmad Tijjani Muhammad, the Head Teacher of Sheik Dahiru Usman Bauchi Islamiyya School, Yankaba branch, where Hanifa was coming from before she was abducted, lamented parents’ poor attitude of neglecting their responsibilities on their children.
“I am just compiling letters to be sent to every child’s guardian to come over for a discussion in other to find a way out for the safety of all parties involved.
“We have sets of guidelines, rules and regulations we give to every parent when he enrol his child here, among which is being observant and taking the responsibility of bringing and picking up their wards.
“Honestly speaking, parents’ negligence plays out here because some children sometimes spend the night here or in one of the neighbouring houses around here,” he said.
He further revealed that a parent, who dropped off his child around 8am did not return to pick the child till around 9pm.
“These children will stay hungry all day most times. How can that child concentrate and learn? This is not the only school that is experiencing this kind of problem, many schools around have lamented this poor attitude from parents.
“Some went to the extent of saying they forget about the children and most of our teachers including myself are not residents of Kawaji. We come from somewhere else far from here and we also have family and other issues to attend to.
“We now agreed to a new rule of sanctioning parents to see if they will change because they do not listen to the calls and complaints we have been extending,” the head teacher added.
Bello Ya’u Sa’ad, a resident of Kawaji, corroborated that the issue of child theft or abduction is not new in the area “and is associated with peaceful coexistence and believe in each other whereby the bad eggs among us use that opportunity to hurt us.”
He also confirmed that many parents in the area have been failing in their responsibilities of looking after their wards despite the menace of child theft.
“Some of them (children) will be here until evening while some are taken to neighbouring houses to be given food and looked after due to their ages,” he said.
Muhammad Abubakar Muhammad, an elderly man who resides at Kawaji, also lamented how they have been battling with the issue of negligence and ill-treatment of minors mostly practiced by parents.
“Parents have abandoned their responsibilities of picking up their wards from school. Whatever will happen, God forbid, is their fault.
“May the gentle soul of our father continue to rest in peace. He is Muhammad Zakariyya fondly called Alhaji Shekarau. He had been the guardian of these abandoned children for years.
“He would call them and take them inside his house and give them food before their parents come for them. Some will sleep in his house until the following morning.
“Whenever a parent comes for his ward, he sits them down and cautions them, but they don’t seem to heed to what he says.”
Giving a historical perspective to the menace, Ismail Ibrahim Muhammad, the chairman of a coalition of parents of missing children in Kano under the umbrella of Protection against Abduction of Children, said over 120 children are still missing since they started counting in 2010.
“We have the 9 children that were gotten from Anambra State and one other making 10 recovered.
“Ever since the arrest of a gang leader at Kawo area, Amina Ibrahim Gara, and one Mr Paul at Dakata, the menace of missing children stopped. Recently, we had the abduction of the five-year-old.
“We are in contact with all authorities concerned, doing our best to see how we can go about the issue.”
He said the coalition’s investigation revealed that in some instances, Almajiris were used in luring or bringing out the children to their abductors and it happens mostly late in the evenings.
“Kawo, Hotoro, Yankaba (where Kawaji is situated) and Gama have the highest number of victims,” he said.
Attempts to have the National Agency against Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) react to the development proved abortive as the agency’s Kano office said it is currently working on a plan that has to do with the issue and would not like to disclose any information before acting.
However, Kano State’s Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Zahra’u Muhammad Umar, said the government has done its best in the past and is still doing the needful to curtail the menace of abduction of minors in the state.
“We have a committee of enquiry on the missing children, tasked to oversee the affairs of happenings and possible way out.
“However, I would like to draw the attention of parents who are not meeting up with their responsibilities to have a rethink because these children are under their custody and they will account for how they raised them,” she advised.
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