Victim of Abudu-Andani madness narrates ordeal

STORY: RICHMOND KEELSON, WITH ADDITIONAL FILES BY KWESI COOMSON

Sadia Seidu is secretary of the zonal office of the Nurses & Midwives Council in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital. She was a victim of Abudu-Andani mayhem early last year and in the process beaten, tortured, raped and dumped by Andani hoodlums, led by one Haruna, who has gained the notoriety as lead Andani assassin.

Haruna was joined in the gruesome act by other assailants like Alhassan and Basharu, all known members of the Andani hit squad. In the act, Sadia was not even offered a pleasant ordeal of forced sex, instead her pursuers pushed a huge hunters’ stick into her vagina and in the process destroyed her three month-old pregnancy. She was lucky to have had her womb intact though.

They tried to break her head with sticks and cutlasses, but managed to save her skull with her hands. The bruises on her legs as the pictures on the pages show, offer an indication as to the extent of her ordeal at the hands of her assailants.

Her crime, as she narrates, was that she is an Abudu and married to Alhaji Baako, the campaign manager of Nana Akufo-Addo in the Northern Region during the 2008 presidential election.

That she still lives today to narrate her ordeal at the hands of the Andani hoodlums, who are also members of the ruling NDC, is as miraculous as a fairy tale. But the marks and the scars she sustained in the one-sided group thrashing indeed confirms that she once had a close shave with death.

Her problems occurred on February 17, 2009 when she had closed from office and on her way back home she together with her husband and some NPP sympathisers gathered to confer at the Northern Regional office of the NPP.

“My husband had a strange call from an NPP youngster who was attacked by some Andanis at an abattoir in Tamale, but was strangely taken to a police station at Tamale,” she narrates.

The husband responded quickly to the distress call by moving his motor bike to go and see the NPP youth at the police station; and on her way, she tells Today, a known Andani and NDC assailant – popularly referred to as Basharu in the Tamale metropolis, who was driving a motor bike came to warn them: “You people are sitting here, when we come back you will see what would happen to you”.

But Basharu Rasheed could not live to carry out his threat. He lost his life in a bizarre circumstance that can only be described as suicide. Madam Seidu, who is the second wife of Alhaji Baako, further narrates that the deceased was carrying a gun concealed in his smock and was driving to the police station where the NPP boy was detained.

His mission, the lady could not fathom, but only hazard a guess, was that there was every possibility that Basharu was out to the police station to cause commotion as has been the normal practice by many Andani thugs under such circumstance.

The death of Basharu served as the catalyst for the blood-letting Andani youth to go on rampage destroying everything they considered belonging to the opposition, especially the NPP.

“They left Basharu at the hospital and instead started destroying everything NPP. In the process, they broke a huge a bill board of Nana Akufo-Addo situated at Kokuo at the centre of Tamale and took to the streets swearing to kill anybody who supports the NPP and also to burn down their houses and property”, Sadia recounts.

The first casualty of the Andani madness was the house of the youngster who called Alhaji Baako on the phone to report to him about the detention of the NPP boy. His family house was razed down and burnt to ashes.

With the intensity of the frightening posture of the Andanis growing and thickening at every minute, Madam Seidu and her group reported to the police patrol team to offer them protection. They refused to sleep the entire night.

The police team, according to her, did a yeoman’s job by protecting them all night till 5 o’clock in the morning where both parties – the police and the household of Madam Seidu – became convinced that with the coming daylight the hoodlums would be scared to carry out their operation.

But that calculation proved costly. The Andani youth had other ideas. Apparently they were counting the legs of the policemen on duty at Alhaji Baako’s house and immediately they left, they felt comfortable to launch their operation.

By the time of the operation, Alhaji Baako was on his way to the police station where the NPP youth was detained the previous night when he had a call warning him and his household to vacate their house because the marauding Andani boys were on their way to his house.

He made a desperate call to the wives, warning them to vacate the house immediately and never bother taking any of their belonging since that could prove too costly a decision to take. Shockingly, as Madam Seidu recounts, the boys gathered at the palace of the local chief of Twaana, a Tamale suburb, before they advanced to the residence of Alhaji Baako.

“They trapped me as I tried to escape; an electrician among them climbed the electricity pole serving us with electricity to cut the electricity lines serving our household and in the process burnt the entire belongings of the senior wife of Alhaji Baako…

As I tried escaping I met one Haruna, a known NDC activist and also an Andani, and a brother of a close friend holding a gallon of petrol who shouted: ‘That is the younger wife, follow her,’’ Madam Seidu reports.

The poor lady said she then run into a neighbour’s house where she was offered protection by the son of the house owner; but the Andani youth would not yield in the pursuit of their assailant and warned the young man to either let them into the room that Madam Seidu was hiding or risk losing his life.

He had no option than to acquiesce to the demand of the hungry pursuers, where they broke into the room and spotted Sadia hiding at the top of a wardrobe and was ordered to come down.

As she refused, the guys brought a gallon of petrol and threatened to burn the entire house. Under that dreadful and frightening posture of the Andani thugs she had no option than to descend from her safe haven to receive what was inevitably hers.

Her coming down coincided with a commanding voice from Haruna who ordered that her head be split into two by the mean looking blood-suckers who wielded cutlasses, gallons of petrol and a hunter’s stick.

“The first person who carried out the command, tried to hit my head with a cutlass, but I used by hand to protect my head; the second person also tried to hit my head with a well sharpened cutlass, but again I tried to protect my head with my hand and in the process my two hands were seriously mutilated that just the main bone prevented it from falling off”, she sobbed in her narration.

As the blood sprinkled into the face of one of the assailants – Ganiyu, he sucked it with glee and pushed a hunter’s stick into her vagina, and in the process destroyed her three month pregnancy.

“I would have raped you, if we had found you in your own house”, Ganiyu told me. Another of the hoodlums who the victim gave his name as Alhassan then pulled out a cutlass to cut her leg, and although he succeeded, by divine intervention, he could not hit the target although the boy’s action caused bruises all over her legs.

Alhassan then picked a hunter’s stick to hit the lady’s head but again the victim was saved by her pony tail hair-do. Her assailant then left her in a pool of blood taking her for a dead person.

As she gained consciousness, onlookers hurriedly picked her to the Tamale Regional hospital where she was on admission for ten days before a government delegation made up representatives of the Inspector General of Police, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Children and Women’s Affairs visited and gave her GH¢200.

She was later transferred to the 37 Military Hospital where she has been receiving treatment.