‘It’s about life’: Mother demands justice after only daughter’s death in Kano school

The family of Maimuna Sani, a 14-year-old boarding student at St. Louis Secondary School in Kano, is demanding justice after her controversial death on June 13, with police setting up a special investigation panel to resolve conflicting accounts from the school and the family.

A Kano mother is demanding answers after her only daughter came home in a casket. And the story she’s getting from the school doesn’t add up.

Maimuna Sani Salisu, a JSS 2 boarding student at St. Louis Secondary School, Kano, died on June 13 after being rushed from the school to the International Clinic. While the school attributed her death to a fatal asthma attack triggered by arriving late for mosque prayers, the family’s petition cited other testimonies alleging she was punished by senior students through flogging and prolonged kneeling — an ordeal that may have worsened her condition.

Maimuna’s mother, Nusaiba, told Daily Trust the nightmare unfolded through a series of phone calls. “I told her no,” she said, when her sister rang to ask whether Maimuna was asthmatic. When her sister reached the hospital, she was greeted with three words that shattered the family: “the patient we lost.”

The inconsistencies kept piling up. “The doctor told my sister that Nihal was already dead when they brought her, but they claimed she was asthmatic,” Nusaiba recalled. She also noted something that disturbed her deeply. “When I eventually saw her daughter’s body, her mouth was black. I asked what they gave her that made her mouth appear like that,” she said.

The Commissioner of Police, Ibrahim Bakori, directed a Special Investigation Panel led by Deputy Commissioner Shehu Idris to handle the case, with officials from the Kano State Ministry of Justice co-opted to ensure legal oversight.

Nusaiba’s message to the school was unambiguous: “This is no longer about school reputation; it is about life.”