Horrific: Man Locks Wife in Room for Two Years, Claims She is Haunted by Dead Children
A shocking case of domestic abuse and cruelty has been uncovered in Borno State, Northeast Nigeria, where a man named Aman, Abdullahi Isa, locked up his wife in a room and left her to starve for nearly two years.
Isa claimed that he did this because his wife was disturbed by the spirits of their dead children. The couple had seven children who all died under mysterious circumstances.
The appalling incident was exposed on Friday in the Gwange neighbourhood of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, by a team of women and children’s rights activists led by Lucy Yunana.
Yunana said that the Bulama of Gwange (village head) directed her and her colleagues to the room where Isa detained his wife after they were conducting some awareness on s-xual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the area.
“The suspect is the husband of the survivor (name withheld). We were informed that neighbours occasionally sneaked in to provide her food while her husband was away.
“Thankfully, the Bulama of the area took our staff to the house where she was locked in and what they saw was indeed terrible and prompted us to inform the relevant authority to save the woman’s life,” Yunana said.
She added that the woman was found in a bad and dehumanised condition in the room. The man was arrested by men of the Gwange Division of Police and he is currently in custody.
The woman has been taken to a medical facility in Maiduguri for urgent medical attention. Yunana urged the authorities to ensure that justice is served for the woman and that such barbaric acts are prevented from happening again.
This case is a horrific example of the violence that women and girls face in Nigeria. It is important to raise awareness of this issue and to hold perpetrators accountable.