*American Cleric calls for immediate release
For the second time, the handover of the children illegally taken by Kano state government from an orphanage in the state was sabotaged, Barrister Emmanuel Ogebe, International human rights lawyer. rights lawyer, has said.
Ogebe, a United States based activist, in company of a renowned american cleric and human rights advocate, Dr. William Delvin, said one of the children David Tara, died in custody of the state government due to the negligence.
Dr Delvin condemned the refusal of the. Kano government to release the children despite a court order to that effect.
He called on the state government t to act immediately amd release the children.
Ogebe in his part said in 2019, the children were illegally taken out an Orphanage in the state, Du Merci and have been in the custody of the state government till date.
The case was taken to court and there was a consent judgement of the court that the children should be released to the orphanage.
The court in the consent judgement in March 2025, ordered that those who were of age among the chidden should be allowed to decide, if they want to return to the orphanage or not while the minors among them should be taken back to the orphanage.
According to him, since the judgement was delivered last year, the state government has failed to comply with the judgement.
At a news conference in Abuja, Thursday, he accused the commissioner for Women Affairs in the state, Amb. Hajiya Amina Sani Abdullahi, of complicity in the death of Tarfa.
He commended the Attorney-General of Kano state, for the efforts he has made to ensure the release of the children.
Ogebe said, “I have four questions to ask, one of them is simply this: the commissioner for women affairs is currently a suspect in the death of David Tarfa, a thirteen year old boy, whose death is currently being investigated.
“He was among the Christian orphans who was taken and who died on January 28th of this year, she is a suspect in the death of the boy and now she’s insisting on keeping the remaining seven of them.
“They are not only insisting on keeping the remaining seven children, they have refused to release the body of the boy who died for which an autopsy has been ordered.
“The court ordered that she should release 18 children last year and what she had done was to release some of them and instead of releasing the rest, she kept them until one died and then has not released his body.
“My second question is this – and this was question raised by Council for the children, If they were truly coming for a handover, how come they did not come with the belongings of the children, so it was completely a fraud that she perpetrated not only on the children but also on the Attorney General, who in good faith believed that the handover in compliance with the court order was going to happen. The third question I want to ask them is, if the commissioner is claiming that the children were asked if they wanted to go back and they said No and started crying and on the basis of that she decided to keep the children. Where is it in our law in Nigeria that a party will cry and on the basis of the crying of that party, the judgment of the court will be anulled? This is why I say this woman is nothing less than an educated Illiterate, people who have resemblance as if they are educated but they have no concept of democracy, rule of law or human rights. I again, repeat that we are awaiting the judgment of the court, investigating the death of the boy and on that basis, this woman should have nothing to do with these children until the determination of how that boy died in their custody. The report we have was some kind of illness and they said they had no money to take him to the hospital and that was how he died, one week after complaining of the illness.
“Our fourth question is this, where in Nigeria is a government more competent to take care of orphans than a well established NGO, an NGO that has existed for over 32 years in Kano and they have never had such an incident and the ministry of women’s affair could not take care of these children without one of them being burnt in his body or being abandoned in the hospital and then one finally dieing in there hands. This is incompetence in its highest order and I want to reinterate that the government of kano should comply with this order immediately.”
