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When Aljannatu Tukur got married to her husband 20 years ago, she never in the wildest imagination thought she was going to be widowed just 10 years after her marriage. Fate played a cruel one on her when she received the shocking news of the murder of her husband. He was assassinated on the street of Abuja and life turned bleak for Aljannatu and her two girls.
How to live without the love of her life was her worry, how the girls would cope without their loving father was a hurting reality for her, the worst was to come when she was threatened and harrassed, the girls were abandoned and their inheritance denied them by the family of her late husband. She was distraught, tragically heartbroken and at the verge of losing her mind. She begged everyone to no avail as the world turned its back on her. Left with no choice, she approached the Sharia court in Abuja and the representative of her late husband family who keeps custody of all the property and fortunes of her husband stood in fierce defence. He told the court, the woman and her girls had no share in his late brother’s will, that the woman should begin a fresh life now that her husband was dead, the girls can grow up to be married. The court won’t take this as he was ordered to release the inheritance of Aljanatu and her kids. Riding under legal technicalities, he frustrated the ruling of the court.
It is now 10 years since Aljanatu lost her husband, this is 10 years of abandonment, and this is 10 years of being denied what rightly belongs to her and her girls. The two girls are 14 and 10 years respectively today and their care has rested on the lean resources of their widowed mother. Who can help them get justice from this powerful man who is a big shot in the Nigerian Intelligence Agency? Can women groups rise in defence of this woman and her poor girls? What about the media?
In her words, she narrated thus her ordeal in the hands of Ibrahim Umar Modibbo, the immediate younger brother of her late Husband:
‘My husband was barely buried when his younger brother Ibrahim Umar Modibbo sneaked into our house and carted away all documents containing land deeds, housing papers, bank information and other valuable documents belonging to my late husband. Why he did that was later to manifest as he locked us out of the house and stopped us from getting anything from the provisions of my late husband. I was harassed and physically assaulted by this man. Not even the administration of the will stopped him from denying us what is legally our entitlement. In one of his rants, he mocked me for not bearing a male child for his late brother as if the girls are not blessing from God. He is so powerful that his family members feared him and are contented with whatever he said. Not even the ruling of the sharia court touched him as he goes round flaunting court order, intimidating the judges as he bragged of being a powerful man in the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA).”
‘My girls miss their father and they always wondered why their uncle is treating them so bad and unfair. We have cried to family members to no avail, not even the rulings of the court would touch him. I am helpless woman begging the world to help me stop this ill treatment from a man that was supposed to be a sibling of my late husband.’
“Things got so bad” she continued “that we had to pay rent to this man on the same property left by my late husband! My girls get sick and this man never for once helped out with their medical bills. He had also never paid their school fees as repeatedly, my daughters have been chased out of school for my inability to pay. This man has denied my children everything their father left behind. He has taken over their inheritance to the extent of using the proceeds to build a very large edifice for himself and his family.
She called on well-meaning Nigerians to intervene in this matter; “this is nothing but sheer wickedness by a man that shared the same blood with my late husband. He can deny me what is mine but I wish he provided for these girls who have been cut off from the love of their father. As we speak, he has severed all form of communication with us; he has relocated to the United States of America leaving us to suffer as he has done since my husband passed away. I sincerely wish the world could help me to fight this injustice.”
Source: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2251272251562468&id=100000391453574
