In the dusty compounds of Mashegu Local Government Area, where extended families live under one roof and children are often left in the care of grandparents, 14-year-old Hadiza’s childhood ended long before she understood what it meant to be a child.
She has lived in her maternal grandfather’s household since she was two. The man she calls “grandpa”, 75-year-old Malam Musa Gado, is not just the patriarch of a sprawling family of four wives and roughly 40 grandchildren, he is also the man who arranged the marriage of her mother. For more than a decade, Hadiza’s world was bounded by his compound walls. But that world collapsed during the holy month of Ramadan last year. In a low, trembling voice captured in an interview that has now circulated on Crusaders Radio in Minna, Hadiza recalled how Malam Musa began to isolate her.
“He called me away from where I usually stayed by my mother’s side, saying it is better I stayed where he was,” she said. What followed, she alleged, was repeated sexual abuse that continued until she became pregnant. When the pregnancy could no longer be hidden as she was about seven months gone, the cover-up efforts began, she disclosed.
An impeccable source disclosed to Ayemafuge that Malam Musa attempted to terminate abortion when he took Hadiza out of the village to an undisclosed facility. There, she was given injections and pills meant to terminate the pregnancy. She recalled experiencing violent shaking, heavy bleeding and pains so severe that she thought she would die. The procedure failed and the baby survived.
Then came the frame-up. According to an eye witness who explained to our correspondent “Malam Musa allegedly pointed accusing finger at a marginalised local boy, claiming he was responsible for the pregnancy but Hadiza responded and said she did not even know the boy and had never met him in her life.” The witness reported.
When that story collapsed, money changed hands in the sum of N2 million, she claimed, paid to local officials to kill the case and silence any investigation. Yet the girl refused to be silenced.
Bringing up the matter made a human rights group in Minna, which holds a programme called ‘Crusaders’ on Prestige FM in Minna, the state Child Rights Agency and the Nigerian Police, took up the matter. The grandfather, Malam Musa, was summoned but he denied everything.
Confronted with the impossibility of proving or disproving paternity through words alone, all parties agreed to a DNA test. The results, released in March, were unequivocal: Malam Musa Gado is the biological father of the child Hadiza carried as the result of the test showed the probability of paternity to be 99.9999 per cent.
The baby, a boy named Muhammad, is now about one month old. Hadiza, still a child herself, sits beside him in the same compound where the abuse occurred. In the interview, she speaks with a mixture of exhaustion and quiet defiance, expressing deep remorse for the nightmare she has lived through, not because she feels responsible, but because of the weight of what happened to her body and her future is already crushing.
The Child Rights Agency and police are now involved in the case, and every attempt to cover it up is being aborted, especially as the DNA evidence has removed the last fig leaf of denial.
Director-General of the Niger State Child Rights Agency, Barrister Uma Kaltume Mohammed, who spoke with Ayemafuge, confirmed the incident, saying that investigation was still ongoing and she would brief the media when all investigation was concluded. She described the case as a delicate one, adding that it was being treated as such. But questions people are still asking include how many other girls or granddaughters have Mallam Musa violated the same way and are forced to remain silent? How many forced abortion attempts or N2 million bribes have succeeded where this one failed?
Nigeria’s Child Rights Act 2003 is clear: sexual abuse of a minor is a serious offence, and incest carries even stiffer penalties. Yet enforcement in rural local government areas often depends on the persistence of victims and the bravery of a handful of journalists and activists.
For Hadiza, she wants the government and security agencies to take over and ensure the man who raised her from infancy and took away her innocence is held accountable.
Hadiza awaits justice as she cradles one-month-old Muhammad, the infant who is both her son and her brother by blood. Meanwhile, the grandfather is in police custody pending the completion of the investigation and when he would be charged to court.
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