Incidences of lovers being found dead inside vehicles around Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital have been generating reactions from the Kano public. While some residents blame the incidents on poor security vigilance, others point fingers at what they see as an emerging social problem associated with the proliferation of social networking on mobile phones and the internet.

A man and a lady were on March 14, 2012 found dead inside a Peugeot 406 car at Kundila quarters around the precinct of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in Kano. The young man, Abba Abubakar was said to have received the vehicle, with registration number AW 576 KMC, from his brother Ahmad Lawan Maduwa the previous night for repairs the following morning. But he was found dead by passersby in the morning, with a lady, identified by relatives as Ummul Khair Muhammad inside the car.

Their bodies bore no sign of injuries from any violent encounter, although the police in Kano blamed their deaths on poisoning after conducting an autopsy. The two were believed to have met through a social networking forum on Blackberry phones.

Now almost two months later, the lifeless bodies of another man and woman, Najib Aliyu Yunusa and Nadiya Abdullahi Gwammaja respectively were discovered decomposing at a quiet area inside Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital by passersby who were attracted by an odious smell that was oozing from a heavily tinted saloon car and seeping into nearby hospital buildings.

A source from the lady’s family, who claimed to be her younger brother, said Nadiya was a divorcee and had a 6-year-old daughter from her last marriage, while Najib, a manager of a filling station in Abuja, was merely her ‘blackberry fiend’ who was also married and had two children.

“We discovered that she obtained the contact of the deceased man from one of her closest female friends in our area,” he said.

A hospital official said after patients complained about some strange smell, workers traced the source of the odour to the car in which the decomposing bodies were found at about 7pm last Monday.

“The deceased were suspected to have died since Friday when they came there and parked; only God knows what happened, Aminu Inuwa Ringim, the hospital’s spokesman told reporters.

People, who were in the area when the corpses were evacuated, said there was no sign of physical injuries or violence on them. “The only unusual thing was that blood was seen trickling down the noses of both corpses which were swollen up”, a patient’s relative, Musa Garba, told our reporter.

Garba observed that it would be difficult to say if anybody was behind their deaths because the vehicle in which deceased were found was uncommonly secluded.

“The car looked well parked in the power house area, which is shady because it has many trees. The vehicle’s screens and glasses were so dark that it was unlikely for anybody to know there were people in it. They might have probably been poisoned elsewhere before they came into the hospital”, he noted.

A medical source, who spoke to our reporter on condition of anonymity, lamented that the hospital has been allowed to be used by some people as a relaxation and not a health centre.

“People come into the hospital and park their vehicles indiscriminately without any security personnel identifying them. In some instances, there are people that park their vehicles inside this hospital and leave them there for weeks and even months before they come back to pick them. This happens as a result of insufficient surveillance by the hospital’s security officials”, he complained.

“There are some young men that even come into this hospitals in search of girlfriends or fix appointments with their girlfriends in this hospital because they take advantage of the little vigilance on the hospital”, he added.

The spokesman of the hospital, Ringim, who reacted to the claims, argued that people could not be prevented from coming into the hospital because it is a public place.

“We do our best to restrict movements of vehicles into this hospital, especially in the evening, but most of them give many types of pretexts just to secure entry. Some people will tell you that they have come to withdrew money from ATM machines in the hospital since we have banks, but you may find them elsewhere inside the hospitals. What you need to understand is that there is no way you can read the motives of all those people that come into the hospital” he said.

He said only staff members, who travel for seminars or assignments park their vehicles in the hospital and leave them for weeks, but not members of the public. “And we have introduced a policy to regulate such practices. Any staff member who wishes to park his/her vehicle inside this hospital for days or weeks must secure permission from the management before they do so. Otherwise they may be doing so at their own peril. We believe that this step will help in identifying those who come into the hospital and park their vehicles arbitrarily”, he said.

On whether the hospital is turning into a ‘lovers’ nest’, Ringim said that “at times you see couples sitting and chatting on some of the benches that have been provided around the hospitals, but you can’t just start interrogating these kinds of couples on their mission at the hospital. It doesn’t make sense”.

A parent, Maryam Fagge, 40, opined that there is a need for parents and guardians to re-examine the use of latest mobile phones like blackberry and other gadgets which come with social networking facilities in them among young people in the society, notably women.

“This alarming trend should be a source of concern for all parents because it is turning our children into something else. You may not believe it if I tell you that our teenage daughters now abandon the house chores and instead spend more than 15 hours chatting with strangers on blackberry messaging or Face book. That’s how they become used by strange men who later lure them into following them to relaxation or entertainment centers without their parents knowledge or consent”, she lamented.

She advised other parents to exercise control over their children by monitoring their use of mobile phones and the internet strictly. “These technological inventions are not bad in themselves but the way young people abuse them is the main reason parents perceive them negatively. These social networks are just like a knife. It’s a tool that we buy for useful purposes like cutting meat or tomato, but it could also be used to stab or slaughter a human being”, Fagge observed.

As at the time of filing this report, nobody could say for sure what caused the deaths of the couples. The Kano police commissioner, Mr. Ibrahim K. Idris, who briefed reporters yesterday, said that the post mortem samples taken from the dead person have been sent to Lagos for forensic analysis to determine the cause of their deaths.

Moved 2 crime section

So what's the moral of this story poster!

I tried to read that(heavens knows I did) but I got bored after three lines

Mynd_44: I tried to read that(heavens knows I did) but I got bored after three lines

you try sef..
One scrool down the post and i knew i couldnt bother reading it...

slimyem: you try sef..
One scrool down the post and i knew i couldnt bother reading it...

As O said I tried. People were beginning to call me lazy

Useless hausa people,they shouuld just give them a country of theirs

hollandis: Useless hausa people,they shouuld just give them a country of theirs

Save that for the politics section