THERE was pandemonium on the premises of the City Higher Sharia Court, Kanwurin Sarki, Gusau in Zamfara State, as a 27-year-old man, Safiyanu Musa, stormed the court with a cutlass and attempted to behead the judge, Alhaji Hadi Sani Gusau.
Eyewitnesses told the Saturday Tribune that Musa broke into the court session about 11.30 a.m. a few days ago charging at the judge and announcing his intention to kill him.

The judge was said to have, in an earlier judgment a year ago, sentenced Musa to one year imprisonment and 50 lashes, having found him guilty of inflicting injuries on a middle-aged man (names withheld). It was on completion of the one year jail term that he decided to decapitate the judge who sent him to jail last year.

A court clerk, who pleaded for anonymity, said: “He came inside the court when the court was in session and disrupted the court proceedings. Attempts to placate him failed as he kept shouting at the top of his voice that he had come to kill the judge.”

When he was prevented from carrying out his threat, Musa was said to have bolted out of the courtroom and attempted to escape arrest. He was subsequently apprehended and brought back to the court.

When the judge now asked why Musa wanted to kill him, the latter was said to have removed his dresses.

“It looked like he was drunk or had taken marijuana,” a source told Saturday Tribune.

The judge then ordered that he should be taken to the Central Police Station for interrogation. He was thereafter charged to the City Sharia Court, where the Sharia Court judge, Alhaji Hadi Sani Gusau, ordered that he be remanded in prison custody.

However, a court official told Saturday Tribune that due to the sensitivity of the case, the judge concluded that the case should be transferred to another court in order to give the defendant a fair hearing.

The Higher Sharia Court, Samaru, Gusau, where the case was transferred to, has therefore, fixed Monday for hearing on the matter.

Saturday Tribune gathered that the accused had inflicted over 100 cuts on the middle-aged man using a razor. Due to one of such injuries, the man had to undergo numerous treatments at a private hospital in Kano to prevent him from losing one of his arms to amputation.

Musa, the Saturday Tribune gathered, is a school dropout who has become a nuisance in his neighbourhood. He is said to be one of the notorious Area Boys who torment residents of Birnin Ruwan, a suburb of Gusau, the state capital.

On several occasions, he was said to have been on the wanted list of the police, but each time he managed to escape arrest.
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