Just few days after a mob brutally murdered and Igbo woman for alleged blasphemy in Kano, another 41-year old carpenter, Francis Emmanuel, was on Tuesday afternoon stabbed by unknown youths for eating during Ramadan fasting.
It was gathered that the incident happened around 2:30pm on Tuesday when Emmanuel was eating in his workshop. The youths who were many in number suddenly appeared from nowhere started attacking him for eating on the afternoon of Ramadan. He was stabbed and beaten to a pulp.
Speaking with journalists on his hospital bed, the carpenter said, “It happened around 2:30pm at Sokoto Road, Kakuri, on Tuesday, when I went to the market to buy wood to do some work.
“So, when I came back, I bought food to eat. As I was eating, about six Hausa boys came to ask me if I am a Muslim or a Christian, but I did not answer them. They asked why I was not fasting, then, I told them that I am not a Muslim. Before I know it, one of them slapped me. As I stood up, the rest came and surrounded me and started attacking me with knives.”
Asked if he can identify them or not, Emmanuel said, “I don’t know them.
“Nobody could come to my aid because of the type of knives the boys were carrying. They used cutlasses scissors and knives, I became unconscious, I don’t even know who brought me to the hospital,” he added.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Wednesday morning visited the victim of the assault at St. Gerard Catholic Hospital, with a directive that police must fish out the perpetrators for prosecution.
