Kano College Attack: Survivors Recount How Suicide Bomber Exploded

Survivors of last Wednesday’s attack on the Federal College of Education (FCE), Kano, have recounted their encounter with the suicide bombers who gunned down many students and lecturers before blowing themselves up, according to a report in the Northern news medium, Daily Trust.

A group of gunmen stormed the institution at a time lectures were going on in the two major lecture halls of the new site of the FCE Kano located in the Kabuga area of Kano metropolis.

Daily Trust reported that the attack, which lasted for about an hour claimed the lives of 17 people, including an infant, while over 50 others sustained varied degrees of injuries. At the new theatre hall, hundreds of students were raptly listening to one of their lecturers, who was tutoring them a topic in Hausa Studies, when suddenly a man appeared from nowhere clad in a black suit. Commando-style, he shot many students.

“The coming of one of the gunmen into our lecture hall was heralded with gunshots as we are wondering who he was, he just started aiming at us,” a-35-year old survivor, Ahmad Kawo Hadeja, said to newsmen, at the Murtala Mohammad Specialist Hospital, where he is receiving treatment.

Hadeja, who is a school teacher in Jigawa State, said he survived the attack miraculously as many of his colleagues sitting close to him were killed. “I went down flat like many other students in the class because we could not move out as he was at the entrance. It was when we were rushed to the hospital that I discovered that I had fractured on my leg,” he said.

With his close shave with death, Hadeja said he would no longer continue with his studies at the college, stressing that he would make do with the NCE he already has.

“I had my NCE long time ago, it was with it that I secured a teaching job but in my quest to further my studies I enrolled for a Bachelor of Education programme at the college but with this I doubt if I will continue it,” he said. Unlike Hadeja who survived the attack without a gun injury, Fatima on the other hand was hit on the buttocks by a bullet.

“When the suicide bomber blew himself up, we were all worried about Hauwa, my friend who was pregnant because she was among the first people who were hit by the bullets from the gunman. So it was while we were struggling to rescue her that I discovered that I was shot,” Fatima narrated.

“We all knew that Hauwa died on the spot but we were all making efforts to rescue the baby in her womb but when we got to the hospital after medical examinations, we were told that the baby, too, died,” she added from her hospital bed.

Unlike Hadeja and Fatima, Abdulsamad Nasir, is a 12-year-old boy, who was at the institution to sell sachet water popularly known as pure water when the gunmen struck. While scampering for safety, Nasir, who is in primary 5, was shot in his left leg.

“It was because of the long holiday that my mother asked me to be selling pure water so that I can raise money for my school fees. I saw the gunmen when they passed through the gate but before I could escape I was shot,” he said.

Over 50 students are still at the Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital receiving treatment. While some of them are saying they would not return to school, others are saying they will, in order not to allow the insurgents to achieve their aim. For his part, Abbas Idris, who survived the attack without any injury, said he saw one of the gunmen when he was assisting his female colleagues to escape.

Idris, a-200 level student of Social Studies department, said one of the gunmen told them to stop going to school or else they will be sent to their graves early. “As we were assisting our female colleagues to scale the fence, he was shooting. He was alone at the backside of our theatre hall so when he exhausted his ammunition, he now told us that if we refuse to stop going to school, they will not stop killing us,” he recalled.

“After uttering those words, we just heard a loud bang, only to see the body part of the person that was speaking to us litter the ground,” he added.

Narrating how he survived the attack, a lecturer in the institution, who is also a head of department, said the gunmen numbering about five, knocked on his office door several times but he hid inside the toilet. “When they started shooting from the entrance of the college, I was controlling students but when I discovered that they were very close to me I ran back into my office and hid inside the toilet. I switched off the light and lowered the curtains,” the lecturer recalled.

“But they kept knocking; they would knock at the door, wait for a while and they would knock again but I refused to stand up inside the toilet where I lied down flat. I did not know when they left,” the lecturer said, as he narrated his survival strategy to his colleagues on Thursday. He said he spent close to two hours in the toilet before the security operatives rescued him, saying: “I said my last prayers because I never knew I would survive it.”

Close by, another lecturer, Dr. Thomas Kayode Ajamu, was killed by the attackers. He was said to have been shot in the chest inside his office. He hailed from Ogbomosho, Oyo State, and was shot by the gunmen before they blew themselves up. His colleagues said Ajamu joined the services of the institution 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, FCE Kano students have faulted the claim of the security operatives that they engaged the gunmen during the attack. President of the National Association of Kano State Students (NAKSS) in FCE, Usman Mujitafa, said the security operatives were nowhere to be found when the gunmen were unleashing terror on them.

“It is not true that the security operatives engaged the gunmen, they were nowhere to be found. They came after the remaining gunmen have gone. The gunmen operated for about 45 minutes without any confrontation and that was why the casualty was on the high side,” he said.

Culled: Skytrendnews