“All I could remember was that we had just settled down for work on the fifth day of the exercise when suddenly we heard gunshot outside. That was all I could remember,” said the 29-year-old mother of four, Zahara’u Ayuba.
She is one of the few lucky ones that survived the attack by yet-to-be apprehended assailants that unleashed terror on health workers on immunisation routine in Kano penultimate Friday. She was among the four people rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.
Zahara’u told Saturday Punch on her hospital bed on Wednesday that her survival was just a miracle. She said, “When we were preparing for the day’s work, we never knew that death was lurking around the corner.”
Another survivor is Naja’tul Salisu, also a health worker. She was rushed to the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital where she had some bullets removed from her body.
However, Sadi and Ibrahim, two siblings of the same parents, were not so lucky. While Sadi was felled by the attackers bullets on the spot, Ibrahim later died at the Intensive Care Unit of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.
The gunmen who rode on a tricycle popularly known as “Keke NAPEP”, the Saturday Punch gathered, attacked two separate health centres on that fateful day. One at the Kauyen Alu Primary Health Care, Unguwa Uku in Tarauni Local Government Council, and Hotoron Haye in Nasarawa Local Government Area of the state. Simultaneously, the gunmen opened fire on the health workers. They were all motionless, a situation that gave the attackers the feeling that they had successfully accomplished their mission. At the end of the operation, nine persons, mostly women were confirmed dead while six others sustained various degrees of injury as result of gunshot. Not satisfied, the gunmen set the health centres ablaze.
“Initially, on sighting the gunmen, we thought they were bringing patient to the hospital, but when they alighted from the Keke Napep, they brought guns and shoot into the air before attacking the health workers,” said a witness who did not want his name in print.
That was the calamity that befell defenceless health workers out to eliminate the child-killer disease – polio in Kano State where the disease is most prevalent. They were about going out for an exercise to round off the four-day polio vaccination campaign when the met their death.
According to Siddiqa Ayuba, 25, and sister to one of the survivors, Zahara’u, when the incident took place, the entire family were left in confusion. She told reporters that the incident sent the entire members of the family in different directions in search of the sister. She was grateful to the state government for footing the medical bills of the survivors and other well-meaning individuals that came to their aid when the incident occurred.
“I was about going out when the news filtered in that my sister had been shot by gunmen. It was my sister’s husband who called to tell us that his wife was shot. Upon receiving the news, I became dumbfounded. In fact, my husband had to snatch the handset from me. We then divided ourselves to search for the hospital she was rushed to. My elder brother went to the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital while my husband went to the Murtala Muhammed Hospital. It was on our way that we got a phone call that she(sister) was at the Emergency Ward of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital,” she said.
Narrating her ordeal, Zahara’u told our correspondent that she was grateful to the Almighty Allah because she is alive and will see her four children again. Since her travails, the children, she said, had been under the care of her sister.
Condemnations have continued to greet the dastardly act even as the Nigeria Police Force has yet to make any arrest, one week after the incident took place. But the Inspector General of Police, Muhammadu Abubakar, has vowed to apprehend killers of the nine health workers, who were on routine immunisation in the state.
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