While the late murder victim Bilyaminu Bello’s family members were vigorously protesting the pardon granted to the wife who murdered him in cold blood, a man claiming to be his biological father was hauled before pressmen in Abuja by Maryam Sanda’s parents, and he eagerly supported the controversial pardon. He said he wants her to be able to bring up his grandchildren.
Alhaji Ahmed Bello Isa, who sat beside Maryam Sanda’s father Alhaji Garba Sanda at the Abuja press conference, is a retired storekeeper in the old Sokoto State. He met and married Bilyaminu’s mother at Women Teachers College, Bodinga in 1980, where she was a student and he was the storekeeper. Bilyaminu was his mother’s first child. She went to her parents’ house to give birth to him in 1981, as is the tradition in Hausaland. She died not long afterwards. Ahmed Isa went and condoled with the maternal family, but never turned up again since then. Bilyaminu was then brought up, first by his grandmother and then by his uncle, former Communications Minister and former PDP National Chairman Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed. That’s how he prospered in Abuja circles, met and married Maryam from her high-flying family. Before tragedy struck in 2017.
Malam Ahmed Isa never appeared in Bilyaminu’s life since then. He did not attend either of Bilyaminu’s two marriages and he never saw the kids from the marriage. Today [Tuesday], looking gaunt and poverty-stricken, he suddenly surfaced at a press conference and claimed that he appealed to President Tinubu to pardon his so-called daughter-in-law. He was appearing for the first time, 44 years since Bilyaminu’s birth and 8 years since his death. He never turned up during the protracted court cases that went up to Supreme Court.
His sudden appearance now and so-called forgiveness attests to the wealth, social power and reputed reckless behavior of Maryam’s parents and the continued effort to sweep her atrocious crime under the carpet. Between this “father” and the maternal family members who are protesting the controversial pardon of their relative’s killer, who really loved Bilyaminu?
