A woman, Hadezia Abutu (nee Afegbua), who allegedly shot her husband, Ibrahim, to death two days after he wedded a second wife in December 2011 has been rearrested and detained by the police in Abuja after she was initially granted bail by Justice Abubakar Talba of the Abuja High Court, Gudu.

Hadezia had allegedly shot her husband, Ibrahim, a former employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, in their Wuse II, Abuja residence about 24 hours after the deceased took a second wife in Gombe.

Although the late Ibrahim’s relatives insisted that Hadezia, a mother of one, had a hand in the murder of her husband as she reportedly gave contradictory accounts of what transpired between her and the deceased before his death, she had consistently denied culpability.

Hadezia, an employee of the National Youth Service Corps, was said to have told the police that her husband was cleaning the gun when it accidentally went off and killed him.

But a relation of the deceased said that just before he died, Ibrahim had managed to tell his younger sibling, Obotu, that his wife had shot him.

An autopsy conducted on Ibrahim indicated that he was shot at point-blank range and the bullet hit his heart and broke three ribs.

The police had on Jan 3, 2012 arraigned Hadezia with her sister, Nafisat Afegbua, Oyifie Okoh (cousin to the deceased), and a girl, identified simply as Anne, before a Karu magistrate’s court on charges of conspiracy and giving false information to the police.

The magistrate granted them bail in the sum of N1m each and a level 13 civil servant as surety for Hadezia, while her co-accused were asked to produce a level eight civil servants as sureties.

On fulfilling the bail conditions, the police re-arrested Hadezia and arraigned her before Abuja High Court, Gudu.

The police prosecutor, Mark Igwe, DSP, who was reluctant to comment on the case, explained that he had filed an ex-parte motion for extension of time to conclude investigation, adding that the woman was to be charged with criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide, which is punishable by death.

“But I was surprised to see the accused in court and she was granted bail by the presiding judge to the surprise of everyone,” Igwe said.

When asked if he had enough evidence to convict the accused, Igwe said the prosecution had ‘concrete evidence’ against her.

The counsel to the Abutu family, Isaac Sambo, explained that the prosecution filed an ex-parte motion pursuant to Section 129 of the Criminal Code, praying the court to remand the accused person in prison custody pending the conclusion of investigation by the police.

Sambo said, “The accused was not supposed to be in court because it was a motion ex-parte, but she was brought to court and the presiding judge suo motu granted her bail; the police (prosecution) was not given an opportunity to oppose it.

“There are many questions surrounding the handling of the matter. For instance, the police filed the case directly at the court instead of taking it to the registry, where the chief judge would assign it to any judge he deemed fit.”

The lawyer, who expressed deep reservations about the bail granted to the accused, stated that his client was thinking of petitioning the National Judicial Council or asking the Chief Justice of the FCT to reassign the case to another trial judge.

Police sources said the investigating team had come under serious pressure from influential members of Hadezia’s family.

The members of the Abutu family were distraught over the decision of the court to grant the accused bail, though there was no bail application before the court.

One of Ibrahim’s siblings, Ishotu, said the suspect had given conflicting accounts of how her husband died, pointing out that Hadezia had claimed she was in the bathroom, but she later said she was in the kitchen when the husband shot himself.

Ishotu said the moment Hadezia learnt her husband had died, she allegedlywent back to the house from the hospital and cleaned the crime scene.

She said, “We were all at the hospital praying that my brother would survive the attack. The moment we heard that Ibrahim had died, the wife allegedly went home and destroyed the crime scene to cover her tracks. She cleaned the blood and changed the curtains. She also hid the gun in the toilet.

“When challenged, she said she had cleaned the blood on the floor because her son was playing with it. This can’t be true because the son was with her younger sister in the house, and besides, she did not allow the police to record the crime scene before doing this.”

Ishotu stated that she had witnessed quarrels between the couple during which the suspect would break things in the house in anger.

Reacting to Hadezia’s initial release by the court, Obotu said he was devastated by the turn of events which he said had destroyed his faith in the nation’s judicial system. “I think they deliberately created loopholes to allow the accused escape justice,” he lamented.

However, following the condemnation that followed the court’s decision, the police re-arrested the accused 24 hours later.

I just hope this is not some other guy, trying to seek attention.