The death of Maimuna Sani, a 14-year-old student at of St. Louis Secondary School, a boarding/day institution in Kano State, has continued to generate reactions among social media users.
The deceased girl’s mother, Nusaiba, accused the school authorities of subjecting her daughter to a punishment that resulted in her death.
A viral video trending on social media showed Nusaiba narrating how her daughter, also known as Nihal, collapsed after being forced by her seniors to kneel under the sun for hours for failing to attend an early morning Muslim prayer session.
She said the incident occurred last Saturday when the teenager was allegedly ordered to kneel on a rocky surface from morning until evening as punishment for missing the prayer.
“My daughter kept pleading for water, but they refused to give her any. She later collapsed and was rushed to the hospital where a doctor pronounced her dead,” the mother said
Nusaiba accused the school authorities of initially concealing information the true circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death.
“At first, I had resigned to fate when they lied to me about the circumstances of her demise. But I prayed to God to expose what actually happened, and it’s now clear that my daughter was tortured to death,” she said.
According to her, students, who reportedly witnessed the incident, said the deceased was subjected to the prolonged punishment under intense heat before she collapsed.
The mother also recounted her own ordeal on the day tragedy struck.
“That same Saturday, I was on admission receiving treatment when I received a call that my daughter had been admitted into an intensive care unit,” she said. “I had to jump out of my own sick bed and rush there.”
Maimuna, she added, was her first child and only daughter among three children. “I have two boys. She was only 14 years old,” she said.
The management of St. Luis Secondary School in Kano State has not publicly responded to the allegations as at the time of this publication.
