Katsina family fleeing terror faces community’s suspicion after Abuja school explosion

After fleeing from the terror of bandits in their hometown of Masgaba in Kankara Local Government Area of Katsina State, the family of Ilyasu, itinerant Almajiri students and their teachers now face suspicion from other residents in an Abuja community that has accommodated them for about 10 years.

This followed a tragic explosion at an Islamic school in Kuchibuyi in the Bwari Area Council of Abuja.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) killed two people and injured two others at Tsangayar Sani Uthman Islamic school in Kuchibuyi.

A police first information report obtained by our reporter revealed that three people from Katsina had visited the owner of the school, Adamu Ashimu. According to the report, the visitors came with the explosives.

“Two of them died in the explosion,” the police stated, adding that the other person was critically injured and hospitalised.

The police have also arrested Mr Ashimu, the owner of the Islamic school, saying he would be “interrogated immediately and the outcome would be forwarded.”

After receiving a report about the incident, the divisional police officer in Byazhin mobilised officers, including the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, to the scene.

“The FCT Bomb Squad recovered the remnants of the explosive device, confirming that it was an IED,” the FCT police spokesperson, Josephine Adeh, said in a statement.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the explosion in the Nigerian capital, different armed groups, including some linked to the Islamic State operating in northern Nigeria, use heavy artillery, including IEDs.

The police have cleared off the remnants of the IED, but the blood-stained sandals of the students and perforations caused by the explosive device left on the school’s building paint a picture of the disastrous incident.

A witness and resident of the community, Faith Modupe, said more people would have been affected had the almajiri boys gathered in their large numbers the way they used to.

“Thank God they are not many. It was just a few people that were there,” she said.

Double suffering for family

For more than eight years, the family of Ilyasu had lived peacefully with their neighbours in Kuchibuyi. Mr Ilyasu’s brother, Lawal, had settled in the community two years earlier.

After they were forcefully evicted from their village, locals from Masgaba moved to Yer Goje, a neighbouring village. But their new destination was also not a haven, forcing people like Mr Ilyasu and his brothers to move down to Kuchibuyi.

Even though the IED incident left a tale of terror on them, the displaced family of Ilyasu and the almajiri school will now have to cope with suspicion from their neighbours, most of whom are Gbagyi, a dominant tribe in rural Abuja communities.

Mr Ilyasu’s 13-year-old daughter was also a victim of the incident. The explosive device detonated near her, shattering a transparent plastic bucket she was using to sell ‘awara,’ a local soybean cake. She sustained injuries to her left leg and right arm.

The girl, according to Salamatu, the wife of Mr Ilyasu’s brother, Mr Lawal, said she saw the explosive device before it sent a trembling sound across the Kuchibuyi community.

“She told me that the boys were toying with something like a bottle,” Mrs Lawal who was with the girl when PREMIUM TIMES visited her in Kubwa General Hospital said. “They dropped the substance close to her bucket before it blew up.”

Mrs Salamatu’s words were corroborated by witnesses and residents of Kuchibuyi. Multiple sources in the community explained that the substance was emitting smoke before the boys dropped it on the corridor of their two-block classroom where it went off, killing one of them instantly and injuring others, including the girl.

One of those injured later died in Kubwa General Hospital. A source in the facility who was not authorised to grant a press interview revealed that the deceased’s hand was severed by the explosive before “they were brought here.”

The other injured almajiri boy was undergoing medical treatment at Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital, Abuja.

The girl’s mother, Murja Ilyasu, recounted how her daughter went from hawking to being injured and hospitalised.

“She was about to go and sell her awara when an almajiri boy came to call her,” she said. The boys whom she described as her relatives “sent for her because they wanted to buy awara.”

The next thing Mrs Ilyasu heard was an explosion that would injure her daughter and kill her almajiri relatives, including her brother’s 22-year-old son, Harisu. The other almajiri who lost his life was Abdulmajid, a nine-year-old boy.

“We were inside the house when we heard the explosion,” Mrs Ilyasu continued. “I then saw her running into the next compound [opposite the almajirai school]. I also saw a boy running after her, but I didn’t know that something had happened to her.”

When Mrs Ilyasu stepped out to see what was happening, she was met with agonising cries of her daughter and the lifeless bodies of her relatives.

A family’s plight

While the family of Ilyasu mourn their children, they are entangled in another misery with the police.

According to family sources, the police are not only holding Mr Ashimu, the owner of the Islamic school, but they are also “restricting us from burying our children.”

While Mr Ashimu may be released after interrogation by the police, the family has been told to go and await the decision of the FCT police commissioner before the bodies of their children could be released to them for burial.

The fathers of the deceased boys, Ibrahim Isah and Lawali Ahmed, told PREMIUM TIMES that they have been restless since the incident happened on Monday. Both of them travelled from Kastina to Abuja on Monday after their sons were announced dead to them by phone.

“We left Kastina at 2 p.m. yesterday and we arrived in Abuja around 11 p.m.,” Mr Isah, the father of nine-year-old Abdulmajid, told PREMIUM TIMES. “We slept on our feet in the hospital and our children were not released for burial according to Islamic rites.”

Mr Ahmed said his 22-year-old Harisu died in search of Quranic knowledge. He hopes to bury him as soon as he can.

Who brought the explosive device?

This is the question begging for an answer and also at the centre of the police investigation. However, residents of Kuchibuyi believe the almajiri brought in the explosives from Katsina. The police also mentioned this in their statement.

The police said the deceased boys and the other one hospitalised at Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital came with the explosives three days before the incident, a claim the family of Ilyasu found so weighty on their children.

Although the family admitted that their children came three days before the incident, they disputed claims of intending to inflict terror on the community, asking our reporter to inquire about their peaceful conduct in the previous years of living with their neighbours.

A family source who asked not to be named said the Almajiri students and their teacher, Mr Ashimu, came from Kastina on 3 January for Quranic studies.

“The incident happened around 11 a.m. after they finished their morning studies,” he said, adding “Mallam Ashimu and other students had left the school premises before it happened.”

Mr Ashimu is not the only teacher in the school, PREMIUM TIMES gathered.

“He is the younger brother of Mallam Idris who left with his students during the last rainy season,” another family source said. “They do come after farming season and go back [for farming] when it starts to rain.”

But instead of Mr Idris, his younger brother, Mr Ashimu who is now in police custody returned with “his students,” a source in the palace who pleaded anonymity said, suspecting that Mr Ashimu may have pulled the stunt.

But there is no evidence substantiating this.

However, Mr Dauda, the head of Kuchibuyi, has vowed to end the almajiri system in his community in an attempt to prevent similar scenarios in the future.

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Kuchibuyi

Between 2019 and 2023, Kuchibuyi experienced violent kidnappings and killings.

In 2022, the traditional chief of Kuchibuyi, Isiaka Dauda, was kidnapped by terrorists in his private residence, the monarch disclosed this during an interview with journalists in his palace on 7 January.

The following year, two residents of the community were also kidnapped. One of them simply identified as Austin died a few weeks after his family paid N11 million to set him free. The other victim, Wale, a first-class graduate, was killed by his abductors.

This was despite the presence of local vigilantes in the community. But the head of Kuchibuyi praised the vigilantes, saying they were able to scare away the bandits.