“I saw my son and daughter attacking me with a knife” – inside story of Kano woman who murdered her two children

The 26-year-old mother who butchered her two children with a machete in Kano, Nigeria, has blamed it on hallucinations and paranoia.

While rumours said she did it to protest her husband’s decision to take a second wife, Hauwa’u and witnesses’ accounts suggest she might have been suffering from hallucinations as Daily Trust reports.

Diso community in Gwale LGA of Kano State was thrown into pandemonium Saturday when news broke that one Hauwa’u Habibu, a health worker with Dala LGA, had killed her two children, Irfan Ibrahim, 6, and Zuhura Ibrahim, 3. She also injured her niece, Aisha Sadiq, 10, in a vicious attack.

Already, the suspect, Hauwa’u, who fled after committing the offence, has been arrested by the police less than 24 hours after the incidence.

The spokesman of the state police command, DSP Abdullahi Haruna said a team of detectives immediately rushed to the scene and took the victims to Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital, Kano, where a medical doctor confirmed the two children dead.

Aisha Sadiq was transferred to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, where she was treated and discharged.

Confession 

On preliminary investigations, the suspect confessed to have locked up their house, used a machete and an aluminium made pestle to attack the three children, causing severe injuries on different parts of their bodies.

The police also released some audio of the preliminary interviews conducted by them with some of the principal actors in the incidence.

The prime suspect, Hauwa’u Habibu in the interview said, “What I can only recall was seeing my husband in blood-soaked clothes taking me to my parents’ house asking them to keep me there. Most of the times I used to feel somehow and of recent, I used to experience hallucinations and I told him about that,” she said.

On what happened on the day of the incidence, Hauwa’u said, “I saw my children coming towards me as if we are fighting. They came towards me with something like a knife. I have told my husband before that he comes to me in different forms and shapes. Sometimes, he comes with hooves, carrying things around his body. He never listened to me. I just left for my mother’s home, who didn’t like his new marriage as well,” she said.

She insists that she does not know the cause of her fight with the children nor what she did to them.

“They came after me with a knife. I just left for my mother’s house,” she said.

“What She Told Me”

Her husband and father of the children, Ibrahim Haruna Aminu, said, “She called me in the morning at about 9:55 am telling me that two women and a man have come to the house to kill her. I asked her who is with her and the children and she told me it was the children who were coming to kill her. I told her to keep praying.

“A day before she was behaving abnormally. I asked her to keep praying and will come over as soon as the rain subsides. After about five minutes, she called again and handed over the phone to the children who asked me for Bobo drinks and I asked them to pick one each from my room. She ended the call.”

At that moment, he started towards his house but his car broke down along the way. He called a friend who helped tow his car to the mechanic before he proceeded home.

“Upon arriving, I went in to greet my parents and tried to open the house which was locked and had to use my keys. It was upon entering that I saw their corpses and one injured,” he said.

It was the surviving child, Aisha, who told him that they were attacked by her aunt, Hauwa’u, who then locked up the house and left.

“I went to inform my family who came to evacuate the deceased and the injured to the hospital,” he said.

He then went to his in-law’s house where he met his wife talking with her mother.

“I told her what happened and she broke into tears and my wife started asking what was happening,” he said.

Malam Adamu insists that his wife is mentally unstable “because a sane person cannot do such to his children.”