THE Kano State Police Command is set to arraign three suspects before a Magistrate Court on Monday for the kidnap and killing of a five-year-old girl, Hanifa Abubakar.
Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) of the Command Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa confirmed this to The ICIR during an interview on Monday.
“Currently, as I’m talking to you now, the suspects arrested have been charged to the State Magistrate Court 12, Gidan Murtala, here in Kano state. They are on their way to the court now,” he said.
Kiyawa said the three offenders, two male and one female, have been charged with criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, concealing and keeping in confinement a kidnap victim, and homicide.
The principal suspect, Abdulmalik Tanko, was the proprietor of a private school in Nassarawa Local Government Area (LGA), which Abubakar had attended before her death.
Tanko had confessed to kidnapping the five-year-old last week and demanding a ransom of six million naira from her parents.
He, however, murdered his victim by making her ingest rat poison when he realised that she recognised him.
With help from a certain Hashim Isyaku, he buried his victim’s remains at one of his schools, Noble Kids Comprehensive College.
Speaking with the Kano State Police, Isyaku said Tanko had earlier approached him, and another lady, Fatima Jibreel Musa, kidnapped the child but had gone on to carry out the act himself.
Both accomplices had been arrested by the police and are now being prosecuted.
The Kano state government had shut down the school where she was buried, but angry youths had set the school ablaze in the early hours of Monday.
The police had arrived at the fire scene in time to bring it under control, and according to the PPRO, there had been no casualties recorded in the fire.
“A mob set one of the schools ablaze where the kidnap victim was killed and buried. We immediately rushed there, and we were able to bring the fire under control. No injuries, no life lost, and no arrests were made. We have deployed our patrol there,” he said.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via [email protected] or @ije_le on Twitter.