Dahiru
Bala, the father of Yunusa Dahiru who allegedly abudcted 14 year old Ese Oruru
had a chat with Saturday Vanguard.He declared in Hausa
“I’m Dahiru Bala, a farmer and biological
father of Yunusa. He went further: “My son is 25, and I found it extremely
necessary to stand by him at this moment of his travails despite his failure to
accept my advice initially.”
Giving a graphic detail of what he knew about
the abduction saga, the 55-year-old man said:
Continue after the cut....
“Yunusa
was a house help to Oruru’s family for 10 years and when he told me of his love
relationship with Ese, I opposed him because we already had a bride for him in
the village. When he called to say that he was on his way home with his love I
informed him of the bride we had found for him.” Bala stated that his reasons
also were against the backdrop that “the love relationship between my son and
Ese was built on ignorance of their religious backgrounds which make it
difficult for anyone around here to support their marriage proposal. Here, I’m
talking of embedded contraption that are highly offensive to my religion.”
The 55-year-old farmer revealed that
“there
was no marriage between my son and Ese Oruru due to the contradiction and
illegality involved.”
Bala disclosed that when his son told him of
his plan to elope with Ese, he warned him of the consequences, but when it
became overwhelmingly clear that Yunusa would not heed his wise counsel, the
traditional authorities were fully briefed about an impending illegality.
“I promptly reported the matter to the
Village Head and on their arrival, they were taken to his home and he, in turn,
reported to the District Head at Kura, headquarters of Kura Local Government
Area. Bala disclosed that “sequel to the request of Ese, she was converted to
Islam before she was taken to the Emir’s palace, on the order of the District
Head, for the Emir’s final say.”
The
peasant farmer said that.
“on arrival at the Emir’s palace, a senior
counsellor who took the brief, summoned the Sharia Commission to take custody
of Ese till the following day when the Emir would be available.”
Shedding more light on the Yunusa/Ese love
saga, Bala disclosed that the Emir who subsequently met with them, ordered that
the Sharia Commission should liaise with the Assistant Inspector General of
Police, Zone 1, to return her home with immediate effect. According to Yunusa’s
father,
“the much anticipated return of Ese to
Bayelsa was truncated by her when she broke down in the AIG office and raised
safety questions to her life back home. Subsequently, the move was halted to pave
for investigation.” Bala who was pleased to divulge what he knew about the love
saga said that “the last we heard of Ese was that she was in the custody of the
Sharia Commission and kept in the home of the District Head at Kura.”
The old man threw in the bombshell in his
final submission when he sought to know the fuss about the Yunusa/Ese love
tango. Rhetorically, he bemoaned:
“Is it because I’m not Dangote that’s why the
interest is high?” He never defended bringing Ese to Kano to marry him but
would not accept that Ese was abducted because from all indications from his
son there was a plan to bring the girl to Kano and Yinusa duly informed him
that they were on their way home.
Did
Yunusa actually abduct Ese and forcefully take her to Kano, or she conspired
with him to elope with the desire to get married to him out of genuine love for
him? In a purported recorded interview which went viral on the net early in the
week, and also enjoyed media publicity, Ese revealed that nobody abducted her,
insisting she followed Yunusa to Kano on her own. Giving her name as Aisha, the
Muslim name she was given on her “conversion”,
“I am 17 years old”, she said, unlike the 14
her family claim, and she insisted she was in Kano to be a Muslim. While the
interview generated controversies over its authenticity, her family never came
out to deny or accept she granted it. Then mid week emerged another interview
with a national newspaper, where she gave her age as 14, revealed she did not
know how she got to Kano, did not know what really happened, but just followed
Yunusa to Kano. She spoke of how she became a Muslim and learned Hausa. However,
unlike the first interview, she spoke of how much she missed her family back in
Bayelsa and looked forward to returning home.
Saturday Vanguard investigations revealed that
Yunusa enjoyed a cordial relationship with Ese back in Bayelsa, where he
patronised Ese’s mother’s bucateria (buka), and where Ese regularly served him.
In her own interview, Ese’s mother, Mrs Rose Oruru detailed how she found out
her daughter was missing, and the pains she went through searching for her in
the neighbourhood, learning she had been abducted and her journey to Kano.
Ironically, one of the persons she asked of on learning her daughter had left
home in the morning of that fateful Tuesday, August 12, 2015 and had not
returned by 11am, was Yunusa.
“As I was going (to search for Ese)”, she
told her interviewer, “one of my daughters told me that they saw the carpenter
(another Northerner who also patronises her) lying in front of his shop since
morning and that Yunusa, who usually came between 12 noon and 1pm to buy banga
soup from their buka had not shown up that day. At that point, I decided to go
and ask the carpenter for the telephone number of Yunusa ….” She continued: “…
and he (the carpenter) told me Yunusa does not have a phone and that he usually
comes to beg him to use his phone to make calls. The carpenter asked me why I
was looking for him and I told him that I wanted to charter his keke (tricycle)
and with that, I left his place and went to another shop that he usually
patronise to ask for him.
“When
I got there, I asked the owner of the shop, who happens to be a Yoruba woman,
about Yunusa, and she told me he was not there but that his keke had been
parked all day. She asked why I was looking for him and I told her I wanted to
charter his keke. After a second thought, I decided to open up to her that I
was looking for my daughter, Ese. She asked what Ese had to do with Yunusa, and
I told her Yunusa had disappeared since morning and my daughter was nowhere to
be found.”
The import of this was that immediately Ese
got missing the mother suspected Yinusa? Would she have done so if the daughter
and Yinusa were not close and perhaps in a relationship? But it still didn’t
make eloping with a 13-year-old right. Pregnant Ese Ese, who was returned to
Bayelsa on Wednesday and presently quartered at the police officers’ mess in
Yenagoa, has been confirmed to be about five months pregnant.
However,
Dahiru Bala was quick to defend his son, claiming his son was not responsible
as he never cohabited with Ese because of embedded contraption highly offensive
to his religion. If this is true, more controversies will follow the Ese story.
DNA may follow on delivery.
Culled from Vanguard
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