Kano Killer Bride Saga: Discharge And Acquit Wasila – Lawyer To Court

Wasila Tasi’u

A defence lawyer on March 16, Monday, requested the court to dismiss the murder charges against 14-year-old Wasila Tasi’u, called the “killer bride”, who allegedly poisoned her husband in Gaya LGA, Kano state, last year. 

It should be recalled that apart from the 35-year-old spouse, three other people died as a result of taking a poisonous substance.

According to PM News, in a recent development lawyer Hussaina Aliyu said to the High Court in Gezawa:

“We urge your lordship to discharge and acquit the accused.”
Aliyu insisted that the prosecution had failed to prove her guilt by establishing a connection between the cause of Umaru Sani’s death and Wasila’s intent to kill him.

Witness Hamziyya, the sister of the girl’s co-wife, said that the suspect had given her money to buy rat poison. The defence stressed, however that the state had breached the law by calling a seven-year-old witness.

The prosecution believes that the charge has been proved, and requests the death penalty for Wasila, whose case has generated serious controversies over child marriages.

Both parents of the deceased and the suspect denied that the 14-year-old had been forced into marriage. They noted that it was a standard marrying age in northern Nigeria.

There had been attempts by the defence to direct the case to the juvenile court, but the motion was rejected.

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November 11, 2014
The father of a 14-year-old child bride Wasila Tasi’u, who has been accused of murdering her husband, appealed to a Nigerian court to spare his daughter.

“We are appealing to the judge to consider Wasila’s plea,” her father, Isyaku Tasi’u, told Associated Press on Thursday.

On Wednesday witnesses told the High Court in Gezawa, a town 60 miles outside of Kano, that Wasila Tasi’u killed her husband and three others two weeks after their wedding in April.

The prosecution led by a senior state council from the Kano State Ministry of Justice, Lamido Soron-Dinki, wants the death penalty for the accused.

This case calls into question the legality of trying a 14-year-old for murder under criminal law and the rights of child brides, who are common in the poverty-stricken, predominantly Muslim northern region.

Zubeida Nagee, a women’s rights activist in Kano, told Associated Press:
“She was married to a man that she didn’t love. She protested but her parents forced her to marry him.”
Nagee and other activists have written a letter of protest to the Kano state deputy governor. Nagee stated that Wasila was a victim of systematic abuse endured by millions of girls in the region.

Activists say the blend of traditional customs, Islamic law and Nigeria’s constitutional law poses a challenge when advocating for the rights of young girls in Nigeria.

If Wasila is taken to the gallows, she will be the first minor to be executed in the country since 1997.



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