A woman, Hadezia Abutu (nee Afegbua), who has been accused of killing her husband, Ibrahim, just two days after a new wife was welcomed into the family in December 2011 has been rearrested and detained by the police in Abuja after the initial bail granted her by Justice Abubakar Talba of a High Court sitting in Abuja..
The supposed jealous woman was said to have shot her husband,Ibrahim, a former Staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in their Wuse II, Abuja residence just two days after Ibrahim got hooked to another wife.
Even though the family of the deceased had constantly accused Hadeaza who is a mother of one of killing her husband due to the circumstances that surrounded his death, Hadeaza had denied that she was responsible for the death of her husband.
Late Ibrahim Hadezia and their baby
Hadezia, who is a staff of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), had claimed that her husband was cleaning the gun when it accidentally discharged and killed him.
But on the contrary, a close relation of the late Ibrahim had told the police that just before he died, Ibrahim had managed to tell Obotu, his younger sibling, that he was shot by his wife.
The autopsy carried on Ibrahim showed that he was shot at point-blank range and the bullet broke three of his ribs.
The police had on Jan 3, 2012 summoned Hadezia and her sister, Nafisat Afegbua, Oyifie Okoh (cousin to the deceased), and a girl, identified simply as Anne, before a Karu magistrate on charges of conspiracy and for feeding the police with wrong information.
They were however granted bail with the sum of N1m each and a level 13 civil servant as surety for Hadezia, while her accomplices produced a level eight civil servants as sureties.
After the bail condition had been fulfilled, the police re-arrested Hadezia and arraigned her before a High Court sitting in Abuja, Gudu.
A police source said that if the investigation is concluded and Hadeaza is found guilty, she would be charged with criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide, which will result to capital punishment of a death sentence.
“But I was surprised to see the accused in court and she was granted bail by the presiding judge to the surprise of everyone,” the source said.
Meanwhile, the counsel to the Abutu family, Isaac Sambo, had asked the court to remand the accused person in prison custody until the investigation is concluded.
Sambo said, “The accused was not supposed to be in court because it was a motion ex-parte, but she was brought to court and the presiding judge suo motu granted her bail; the police (prosecution) was not given an opportunity to oppose it.
“There are many questions surrounding the handling of the matter. For instance, the police filed the case directly at the court instead of taking it to the registry, where the chief judge would assign it to any judge he deemed fit.”
Police sources had confirmed that the investigating team had come under serious pressure from influential members of Hadezia’s family.
The Abutu family members were pained over the decision of the court to grant the accused bail, even when there was no bail application before the court.
Ishotu, one of ibrahim younger ones had said that the suspect had given conflicting accounts of how her husband died, stating that Hadezia claimed she was in the bathroom, but later said she was in the kitchen during the accidental discharge.
Ishotu said that after ibrahim was confirmed dead, Hadeaza allegedly ran back to the house from the hospital and washed off the blood stain..
She said, “We were all at the hospital praying that my brother would survive the attack. The moment we heard that Ibrahim had died, the wife allegedly went home and destroyed the crime scene to cover her tracks. She cleaned the blood and changed the curtains. She also hid the gun in the toilet.
“When challenged, she said she had cleaned the blood on the floor because her son was playing with it. This can’t be true because the son was with her younger sister in the house, and besides, she did not allow the police to record the crime scene before doing this.”
Ishotu who spoke on Hadeaza’s temperament and what she was capable of doing said that the culprit had on several occasions embarked on violent fight against the brother.
Commenting on Hadezia’s initial release by the court, Obotu said he was disappointed by the turn of events which he said had destroyed his faith in the nation’s judicial system. “I think they deliberately created loopholes to allow the accused escape justice,” he said.
However, due to the several criticism that followed the decision of the court, the police re-arrested the accused 24 hours after being released.
Comments