Emmanuel Garba, the father of Deborah Samuel, a second-year student of the Shehu Shagar College of Education, Sokoto, who was lynched to death last week for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Muhammad, said he paid N120,000 to transport the remains of his daughter from Sokoto State to Niger State.
Garba disclosed that the government had not contacted him despite the gruesome killing but he maintained that he will not seek any legal redress.
The father of the deceased stated this in an interview with The Punch on Sunday while granting an interview with the newspaper.
He stated, “I have yet to get a call or message from anyone concerning the incident. Nobody called me; I decided to go on my own. I went to the state CID (Criminal Investigation Department) office and begged them to help me get the corpse so I could bury it because leaving it there might make it decompose. Then they took me to the mortuary, did some paperwork, and released the remains to me.”
“I was the one who paid to transport the remains. I was charged N120,000 which I was forced to pay because that was the cheapest, I got as the majority of people don’t like transporting corpses.”
Garba, a security guard with the Niger State Water and Sanitation, said his wife had fallen ill, adding that she had just finished receiving injections.
He also stated, “We are not seeking redress in any court over the killing of our daughter. We are firm believers in Christ who always leave everything in the hands of God. No vengeance, nothing. Everything is left to our creator.
“We don’t want anything (from the government) but it is just unfortunate that we used all our resources to send her to school and now she is dead. She was my eldest child and I have seven others left.”
Her mother, Alheri Emmanuel, who broke down in tears, said, “I have no demands; I don’t want anything but one thing I know is that my children will never go to school again.”
