Justice Usman Na’abba of the Kano State High Court has fixed July 28 to deliver judgment in the trial of a school proprietor, Abdulmalik Tanko, who was accused of murdering five-year-old Hanifa Abubakar after the parties in the case adopted final written addresses.
Abdulmalik and his accomplice, Hashim Isyaku and Fatima Jibril Musa, were arraigned before the Kano State High Court on charges bordering on criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, confinement, and culpable homicide contrary to sections 97, 274, 277, and 221 of the penal code.
At the resumed hearing on Tuesday, the prosecution led by Lamido Abba Soron Dinki urged the court to consider the totality of the evidence tendered before it to find the defendants guilty of the charges levelled against them and sentence them to death.
“We urge the court to pass a death sentence on all the defendants because the punishment of those sections under which they are all charged carried the same punishment of death penalty,” he prayed.
Hanifa was abducted on December 4, 2021, on her way home from Islamiyya School.
The police in Kano subsequently arrested the proprietor, Tanko, for allegedly kidnapping and killing the five-year-old.
Hanifa was a pupil at Tanko’s private school located in Kwanar Dakata in the Nasarawa local government area of Kano State.
According to the police, Tanko confessed that he poisoned the girl when he realised that she had recognised him and buried her remains with the help of Tanko and Isyaku.
