For weeks there have been videos and audios sent out to warn people of some women that go to houses to ask for water to drink, and if you give them the water you would fall down and die and the women would go away or varnish. In another version the water may even turn into blood, and you would have a severe headache. This has created fear and become the topic of discussion.
The acts are said to happen in Kano and Katsina where one man in a video said it happened in his house in Katsina where a woman went and asked for water and somebody in his house fainted.
Also it was said that when one of such women was apprehended in Katsina she confessed that there were about eighty of them sent out to ‘drink blood.’ But surprisingly she was not taken to the police station and nobody asked her who sent them and for what purpose. Besides how were they recruited, where are they from, what is their share of whatever benefits of what they are doing?
People are advised to lock their doors where possible as in one of such videos a woman said they went to isolated areas or houses with gates. She said if they went to congested areas or a ghetto as she said, they would be apprehended and even lynched.
And that is the danger in these things that you cannot verify. Innocent people can fall victims, as I saw a video of a woman who was harassed and abused in one area just because she was a new face there. She was asked where she came from and so on.
She later said she would never go out again; she was traumatised. Her video was taken and sent out as evidence of one of those women purported to drink blood. She was disgraced and her reputation tarnished. She might have been manhandled too.
The authorities and elders should do something before innocent women are killed, because you may be asking for directions in one area and people could descend on you, suspecting you as one of those women.
However, as an aside, I don’t think people go to houses to ask for water to drink these days, this is because taps are not running and people usually buy pure water. Maybe in some communities, but in the Kano metropolis and in the area mentioned in one of the videos, which is a highbrow area by any standard, a strange woman could hardly enter through the gate and ask to drink water.
Besides since pure water is sold everywhere there is no need to go to any house to ask for water, you can buy or beg the water vendor to give you if you don’t have money and you are very thirty.
Women used to go to houses and ask to ease themselves, but even that has been reduced as people no longer allow strangers to enter their toilets. Some were said to steal through that, so they had other motives.
But in this case, it is not about using the toilet, but asking for water to drink which is not plausible.
In any event people should report their suspicions to the police instead of making videos or audios and sending them out, scaring people and causing panic.
The rumours of these women are still that, because you would not hear of any arrest of them by the police, therefore we hope the authorities would go to the root cause and bring an end to it.
