Kano state Police Command said on Wednesday that it has arrested one of the female suicide bombers, Zaharau Babangida, aged 13, who is among those who attacked the Kantin Kwari Market in Kano.
The arrested female suicide bomber, Zaharau Babangida, said she
came all the way from Bauchi to engage in that dastardly act in Kano market.
She told journalists when paraded at state police command jointly with Department of State Security Service on Wednesday that her father took her and her mother to an unknown forest where they met other terrorists in what was like their camp.
Zaharau also confessed that her father together with the people they met at the forest preached to her to be a suicide bomber so as to enter heaven on the Day of Judgement.
“My father said I should first go to heaven and he would join me later. I was so disturbed and decided to do what they asked me to do. It even went to the extent that they told us that if we refuse to take part in that operation they would kill us or they would bury us alive”.
In his briefing also, the state Police Commissioner, Mr Aderenle Shinaba, said the police had also apprehended one of the people who brought the girl to Kano from Bauchi, pointing out that the vehicle in which they brought the girl was now with the security agents.
According to him, the girl was arrested at one of the hospitals in Kano where she went to seek for medical treatment following the injuries she sustained after the market blast.
The commissioner also displayed some of the items recovered from the bomber, including seven explosives and power source.
He said the police found it necessary to address the news conference in order to disabuse the minds of the public on the rumour that the spate of bombings in Kano was being perpetrated by a particular tribe.
‘’We want to disabuse the minds of the public on some insinuations and unfounded rumour that it is the non-indigenes that carry out such heinous acts. In view of the various attacks in Kano, one can understand that no particular tribe is responsible for that; likewise it has nothing to do with the government,’’ the Police Commissioner said.
He warned the residents to desist from spreading rumour as the command would not allow people to take laws into their hands.
Shinaba who called for continuous support and cooperation of the public, assured that the police would also continue to treat any information given to its personnel with utmost confidentiality