A Niger State High Court sitting in Suleja has sen­tenced a middle-aged man, Mr Jameel Mo­hammed Musa to death by hanging for strangulating his 37-year old wife, Hadiza in an hotel room over rea­sons left to conjectures. The trial high court judge, Justice Halima Ibra­him Abdumalik passed the verdict after convicting Ja­meel of culpable homicide.

The late Hadiza, mother of a nine-month old baby girl and daughter of a retired Kwara State High Court judge, Justice Kamaldeen Bello Atoyebi, was strangled to death between May 18 and 19, 2011 by her lover in a room in an hotel located along Kaduna/Lokoja Ex­pressway in Suleja.

The incident occurred between the hours of 10pm of May 18, 2011 when they checked into the hotel room and 5:30am of May 19 when the condemned murderer hurried out of their hotel room under the guise that he had an early morning appointment to keep some­where.

The corpse of Hadiza was later discovered in the hotel room after the checking out time without any sign that the occupant was okay.

Various court docu­ments and oral testimony revealed that Jameel and Hadizat had met in 2008 in Abuja during which they fell in love with each other, courted for about a year, cul­minating into a society wed­ding in Ilorin, Kwara State in 2009. But not long after they got married, crisis hit the marriage as Jameel turned his lover, Hadizat to a punch-bag, beating her mercilessly almost on a daily basis.

Notwithstanding the disagreement between them, Hadiza got pregnant for Jameel and was soon de­livered of a baby girl whom she felt would reconcile them. But the arrival of the baby did not change any­thing as the beating per­sisted, a development that made Hadiza to flee his matrimonial home for his father's house in Ilorin.

Besides, Hadiza felt that there was need for her to be temporarily separated from her husband because Jameel was always in and out of police station and that on a number of occasions when the police were unable to get him arrested, they were al­ways coming home to arrest her alongside her baby and would remain in the cell sometimes for two days be­fore they would be released.

But when Jameel discov­ered that his wife had fled home, he was said to have gone to his in-law's house in Ilorin to beg for forgiveness, giving the impression that he and his wife had genu­inely reconciled their differ­ences. After Jameel had stayed for two days in Ilorin, Jus­tice Atoyebi prevailed on his daughter to go with her husband.

Although Hadiza said she would comply with her father's directive, she how­ever begged that she should be allowed to leave her daughter with her mother in Ilorin, a request that was granted.

However, while traveling back to Kaduna, their base, the couple, upon suggestion from the husband stopped at Tafa and checked into a hotel to pass the night.

Hadiza's father, Justice Atoyebi said he was moni­toring the couple with his cell-phone until about 10pm when Hadiza told him that they could not continue with the journey beyond Tafa because it was getting too late. She had explained to her father that they had checked into a hotel room to con­tinue the journey the next morning.

The couple, indeed, checked into a standard room No 36 which space was sold out at the rate of N5,000. But unknown to Hadiza, her husband checked into the hotel room with a fake name – Ademola Olaniyi.

Justice Atoyebi however became worried the next morning when the calls he made to Hadizat's phone were no longer getting through, the handset having been switched off. He was said to have called his son-in-law who claimed that Hadizat did not sleep in the hotel but had spent the night in her friend's house in the town.

A few hours later, how­ever, a family friend called Atoyebi to break the sad news that Hadizat had been found dead by passers-by and that her corpse was de­posited at the Yar'adua Me­morial mortuary in Sabo-wuse.

The autopsy report con­ducted on Hadiza's corpse at the Umaru Musa Yar'Adua Memorial Hospital in Sabon Wuse in Niger State indicat­ed that she was strangled to death, with nail cuts show­ing on her neck and blood in her nostrils.

But after the autopsy, all efforts to get Hadiza's hus­band proved abortive as he was said to be running from pillar to post like a vaga­bond. The police, however, closed in on him and ar­rested him on October 23, 2011. After taking evidence from him, he was charged to court by Niger State GoV­ernment.

After the long trial, the high court judge, Justice Abdulmalik convicted him of being responsible for the death of his wife and was consequently sentenced to death by hanging.