The 25-year-old girlfriend, Patience Zakaria, was allegedly killed by her 23-year-old boyfriend, Solomon Peter, in Bauchi. Peter claims that he stabbed her in self-defense.
Following an altercation on January 24 in Gwallameji, a suburb of Bauchi metropolis, Peter was arrested by the police after the death of his girlfriend. Read here
In an interview with Daily Trust on Wednesday, Peter stated that he stabbed Zakaria in self-defense after she received a call from another man, whom he suspected she was cheating on him with.
“We were having an issue which I was trying to resolve. This is over one man who called her a prostitute. I asked her what relationship she had with the man and the next thing was her breaking a bottle on my head. She hit me with a bottle and there were witnesses when the incident happened.”
Peter claimed that after Zakaria hit him with the bottle, he took a knife and used it on her.
“It was not that I tried to kill her but I did it as a self-defense because she broke my head with the bottle. At the time of the incident I did not intend to kill her rather, I acted in self-defense out of anger. Our relationship is over one year and I had intention to marry her. I feel very bad over the outcome of my action, it was not intentional. I regret my action,” he added.
A neighbor of the deceased, who spoke to Daily Trust anonymously, stated that the deceased and Solomon were known to be in a romantic relationship.
“The deceased received a phone call from a male friend and Solomon got jealous and started quarreling. As she was trying to explain to him, he pounced on her,” the source said.
“She took a bottle, hit him on the head in self-defense because the beating was too much for her and the man picked up a knife and stabbed her in the back in retaliation. She lost a lot of blood before she was rushed to a clinic in the morning where she was treated and brought back home in the evening. Unfortunately, when I left the place, I heard that the wound got bad and she was again rushed to the clinic that night where she eventually died.”
The spokesman of the police in Bauchi State, DSP Kamal Abubakar, corroborated the narratives of the suspect and the source regarding the misunderstanding between the deceased and the suspect and how the deceased was stabbed.
“When he realised that she was unconscious amidst blood, he took her to a clinic for treatment. However, the clinic also treated her without informing the police and discharged her the same day. When her condition became worse, they took her back to the clinic where she was put on a drip and she eventually died while receiving treatment. We have arrested the owner of the clinic and the staff that treated her because they did not inform the police,” he said.
DSP Abubakar added that the suspect tried to hide the crime but before fleeing the scene of the incident, he was arrested by the police.
He said preliminary investigation revealed that the deceased was a student who came from Borno State to study at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi and was living in a rented apartment.
“We do not know whether the deceased was still a student or has graduated from the purported school. She is living in a rented house alone at Gwallameji, an area predominantly occupied by students,” he said.
When contacted, the spokesman of Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, Muhammad Rabiu Wada, said the deceased and the suspect were not students of the institution