By Uthman-Baba Naseer,Minna <\/p>\n
The Niger State High Court,sitting in Suleja Judicial Division has resumed hearing into the dastard killing of the late Village head of Lambata in Gurara Local Government of Niger State,Alhaji Mohammed Abdulsafur after three years of his killing.<\/p>\n
Some irate youths believed to be loyalist of a purported acclaimed village head, one Illyasu Umar Sarki who is a defendant in the killing of of the late Village head Mohammed Abdulsafur is also standing trial along with twenty eight other suspects.<\/p>\n
At the Tuesday resumed hearing into the case,the defence Attorney,Barrister Baba Shehu, opened their defence before Justice Aisha Bawa Wodu of Suleja High Court number four.<\/p>\n
Counsel to the first accused person and 19 other defendants, Barrister Baba Shehu Ahmed outlined 4 witnesses among the accused persons before the court as witnesses for his defense.<\/p>\n
The first defense witness Musa Mohammed Atanda who is the 12th defendant on the matter and prosecution witnesses 1 told the court that he was not in Lambata at the time the village head was killed as he was in the neighbouring village of Tufa, where he went to collect medicine for his sick mother.
\nHe received a call from one Mai anguwa Umaru who told him there was crises in Lambata.<\/p>\n
According to him, he then returned to Lambata and discovered that security personnel had taken over everywhere and he went to his house where he remained indoor until he was invited to the police area command suleja where he was arrested.<\/p>\n
During cross-examination by the prosecuting chief state counsel Barrister Umar Halilu the witness denied that he doesn’t know any Mohammed Abdulsafur who was appointed as a village in Lambata or the person that was killed as villages of lambata.<\/p>\n
He also told the court that since the death of the last village head about 10 years ago, the acclaimed village head Iliyasu Umar Sarki or any village head were not appointed in Lambata till date.<\/p>\n
The second defense witness Yunusa Ibrahim a cousin to the acclaimed village head also told the court that he was not aware of the incident as he was inside Lambata market when the incident occurred and was only informed by his father when he returned from the market later in the evening and the following day , his cursing Iliyasu Umar Sarki was arrested and taken to the state CID Minna.<\/p>\n
He said he was also arrested two weeks later at the state CID when he went to bail some of the arrested persons in connection to the crime where some family members of the deceased village head saw him at CID and told the police that he was among the suspects.<\/p>\n
The witness also told the court that he was not aware of the appointment of Mohammed Abdulsafur as the village head of lambata and his cousin Iliya Umar Sarki were also not in anytime appointment as the village head of lambata since the demise of the late village head Shuaibu Gani in 2019, even though he doesn’t know who appoints village heads for lambata .<\/p>\n
The presiding Judge, justice Aisha Wodu Bawa told counsels on the matter to assist the court by avoiding unnecessary technicalities that would delay proceeding in the matter, as she intends to speed up the case in order to prosecute those found wanting and give justice to the deserving.<\/p>\n
She then adjourned the case for continuation of hearing to Tuesday the 13th and Thursday,the 15th of May,2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Uthman-Baba Naseer,Minna The Niger State High Court,sitting in Suleja Judicial Division has resumed hearing into the dastard killing of the late Village head of Lambata in Gurara Local Government of Niger State,Alhaji Mohammed Abdulsafur after three years of his killing. Some irate youths believed to be loyalist of a purported acclaimed village head, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13573,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13571\/revisions\/13573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}