A polio worker who narrowly missed death in the hands of gunmen in Kano narrates her experience, writes David Attah
Although she was shot in the head and leg, she never ceases praising Allah. As she narrated her ordeal, each sentence was punctuated with the name of Allah.
“All I could remember was that we had just settled down for work on the fifth day of the exercise when suddenly we heard gunshot outside. That was all I could remember,” said the 29-year-old mother of four, Zahara’u Ayuba.
She is one of the few lucky ones that survived the attack by yet-to-be apprehended assailants that unleashed terror on health workers on immunisation routine in Kano penultimate Friday. She was among the four people rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.
Zahara’u told Saturday Punch on her hospital bed on Wednesday that her survival was just a miracle. She said, “When we were preparing for the day’s work, we never knew that death was lurking around the corner.”
Another survivor is Naja’tul Salisu, also a health worker. She was rushed to the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital where she had some bullets removed from her body.
However, Sadi and Ibrahim, two siblings of the same parents, were not so lucky. While Sadi was felled by the attackers bullets on the spot, Ibrahim later died at the Intensive Care Unit of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.
The gunmen who rode on a tricycle popularly known as “Keke NAPEP”, the Saturday Punch gathered, attacked two separate health centres on that fateful day. One at the Kauyen Alu Primary Health Care, Unguwa Uku in Tarauni Local Government Council, and Hotoron Haye in Nasarawa Local Government Area of the state. Simultaneously, the gunmen opened fire on the health workers. They were all motionless, a situation that gave the attackers the feeling that they had successfully accomplished their mission. At the end of the operation, nine persons, mostly women were confirmed dead while six others sustained various degrees of injury as result of gunshot. Not satisfied, the gunmen set the health centres ablaze.
“Initially, on sighting the gunmen, we thought they were bringing patient to the hospital, but when they alighted from the Keke Napep, they brought guns and shoot into the air before attacking the health workers,” said a witness who did not want his name in print.
That was the calamity that befell defenceless health workers out to eliminate the child-killer disease – polio in Kano State where the disease is most prevalent. They were about going out for an exercise to round off the four-day polio vaccination campaign when the met their death.
According to Siddiqa Ayuba, 25, and sister to one of the survivors, Zahara’u, when the incident took place, the entire family were left in confusion. She told Saturday Punch that the incident sent the entire members of the family in different directions in search of the sister. She was grateful to the state government for footing the medical bills of the survivors and other well-meaning individuals that came to their aid when the incident occurred.
“I was about going out when the news filtered in that my sister had been shot by gunmen. It was my sister’s husband who called to tell us that his wife was shot. Upon receiving the news, I became dumbfounded. In fact, my husband had to snatch the handset from me. We then divided ourselves to search for the hospital she was rushed to. My elder brother went to the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital while my husband went to the Murtala Muhammed Hospital. It was on our way that we got a phone call that she(sister) was at the Emergency Ward of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital,” she said.
Narrating her ordeal, Zahara’u told our correspondent that she was grateful to the Almighty Allah because she is alive and will see her four children again. Since her travails, the children, she said, had been under the care of her sister.
Condemnations have continued to greet the dastardly act even as the Nigeria Police Force has yet to make any arrest, one week after the incident took place. But the Inspector General of Police, Muhammadu Abubakar, has vowed to apprehend killers of the nine health workers, who were on routine immunisation in the state.
Abubakar, who was accompanied by the Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade, on a visit to sympathise with the people and government of Kano State over the attack on the convoy of the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, which claimed six lives, hinted that the police had spread their dragnet in their effort to track down those behind the dastardly act. He said that the incident should not be regarded as a security collapse.
“We will do everything within our capacity to restore peace to the ancient city of Kano. We urge the people of the state to assist the police in providing relevant information, as well as intelligence reports that will help the police to nail the perpetrators of such crimes,” Abubakar said.
The umbrella body of the North, the Arewa Consultative Forum, has condemned the attack on the polio workers. It noted that the attack was unacceptable, adding that the attack was not only absurd but “meaningless.”
The forum, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, said that the attack was mindless and that the Northern group would continue to condemn the mindless resort to violence as a means of resolving perceived grievances.
“To that end, ACF appeals to such group of people to lay down their arms and embrace the civilised ways of addressing their concerns. Also, ACF commiserates with the families of those who lost their loved ones in the attacks. Our heart goes to them. May God give them the fortitude to bear the irreparable losses and to repose their souls,” ACF said.
Journalists Against Polio viewed the attack as a setback in Nigeria’s fight against polio and the campaign for immunisation, especially in Kano which has the highest polio cases in country. JAP’s National Chairman, Mr. Kunle Sani, said, “The killing of 10 vaccinators by unknown gunmen in Kano State is a dastardly act that must be condemned by all. It is shocking, puzzling and a setback for Nigeria’s target to achieve zero case of polio by June and interrupt the spread of the disease by December 2013.”
A coalition of civil rights groups in the north, under the umbrella of National Civil Society Coalition on Immunisable Disease Awareness? described the incident as “unfortunate,” adding that the incident should not be allowed to deter effort in ridding the North of the killer disease by the Federal Government.
Besides, the members of the Civil Society Coalition in a statement at the weekend in Kaduna, after an emergency meeting, said that the intention of those behind the killings of the Polio workers in Kano State was to ensure that the disease of Polio continued to ravage the North.
“The civil society coalition on public awareness on national immunisation have totally condemned the attack on polio vaccination workers in Kano,” said the coordinator, Dr. Mustapha Mohammed, adding that “the attack is an attempt to undermine and subvert the current national immunisation efforts against polio in Northern Nigeria.”
Kaduna-based civil rights activist, Mallam Shehu Sani while condemning the attack, blamed Islamic clerics for the widespread of polio and other communicable diseases in the region, adding that “polio immunisation is in the best health interest of Northern Nigeria.”
Sani told Saturday Punch that the criticisms and attack against immunisation programme is unfounded, unwarranted, ill-informed and uncivilised insisting that “those Islamic clerics that are opposed to the immunisation exercise against polio are not doing so out of scientific reasons or religious reasons.”
According to Sani who is the president of the Civil Rights Congress, the attack on vaccinators in Kano was a direct “product of fanatical preachings and teachings by these clerics.” He urged the people “to resist this campaign of misinformation and to avail themselves of projects and programmes aimed at improving their health and their children.”
Sani warned that the current attack on health workers in parts of the North would be a setback to the region where different kinds of diseases are prevalent.
He said, “Almost all diseases that have been wiped out in other parts of the world like leprosy, polio and chickenpox are still prevalent in the Northern parts of Nigeria as a result of the silent campaign against immunisation, lack of education and misinformation by archaic clerics that are out of touch and out of tune with the realities and changes in the modern world.
“The resistance of the clerics to immunisation, and other programmes of vaccination has contributed a lot in crowding our streets in the Northern states with beggars and physically challenged people. Our religious clerics are standing against science; they are also standing against logic and reason with their misinformed gospel.”
Punch Nigeria
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