The Emir of Katsina, Abdulmumin Kabir Usman, has been accused of abducting and marrying an under-age Christian girl.
The Emir was accused of forcing Habiba Isiyaku, 14, to convert to Islam and marrying her without her parents’ consent.
Habiba’s father, Isiyaku Tanko, told journalists about his family’s predicament in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to him, Habiba was abducted on August 16, 2016 by a staff in the Palace of the Emir.
Speaking through his lawyer , Yakubu Bawa, Isiyaku frowned at the manner the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris and the Katsina State Commissioner of Police, Usman Abdullahi, handled the matter.
“She is under a guardian and the control of her parents now until she clocks 18 that’s the age of maturity.
“The second point is that Habiba cannot be forcefully converted to Islam by the Emir of Katsina, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Abdulmumin Kabiru usman.
“He has no right to do that. The third point to look at is the fact that the Commissioner of Police; this was a helpless man, a vulnerable man that called Stefanos Foundation to come to his aid to secure the release of his daughter.
“And when the CP summoned the parties concerned in his office, what baffled me and my heart is still bleeding is the fact that ordinary security detail gave an instruction that Emir has instructed him that when the girl was brought to his office that he’s under instruction to bring back the girl to the of Palace of the Emir.”
“And yet the CP who has the entire command under his control could not even take a position but unfortunately succumbed to the instruction of an ordinary detail and release that girl back to the Palace.
“He instructed the man to go the Palace the following day and receive his daughter. For me, with due respect, the CP has failed in his constitutional duties as enshrined in the Police Act.
“On reaching the Emir’s Police, all that this man will be confronted with was for him to sit on the floor and the Emir demand to introduce the matter through his aide, the Kilishin Katsina to tell him that, come, since your daughter has converted, she came with Hijab.
“She couldn’t look at her mum and her father. He said since she has converted, there is a big barrier between you and your daughter now.
“The man said if my daughter has converted to Islam, give me my daughter to go and practice her newly found faith in my house. The Kilishin Katsina said no, that it’s not possible.
“The Emir then said that the man has committed a crime, he was compelled under duress, in this statement, they forced the man to say that the complaint he made to the Police was not true. He left the palace shattered, broken, helpless and emotionally broken.
“Habiba is about clocking two months now in captivity” Bawa described “the abduction and procurement of a Christian minor, Habiba Isiyaku by the Emir of Katsina as vicious, barbaric, callous acts and atrocities done to Christians not only in Katsina but the entire north west of Nigeria,” he said.
According to the father, Habiba passed her Junior secondary school examination and was expected to start Senior Secondary School (SSS1) this new term.
