For killing her husband, court sentences Maryam Sanda to death by hanging

The Nigerian police charged Ms Sanda to court for culpable homicide and sought the death penalty against her in a two-count charge.

The victim, Bilyaminu Bello was the son of former PDP chairman, Haliru Bello.

According to Premium Times, Maryam Sanda told the court that she did not kill her husband, rather he died during a fight with her. She told the court that he fell on a broken shisha bottle and died.

However, the court dismissed her statement as a “smokescreen to deceive the court” and said available evidence proved that she stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife with the intent to kill.

According to Mr Ibrahim Mohammed, the deceased’s friend and a witness in court, he was with the couple the night that Bello died.

Ms Sanda had asked her husband for a divorce which he refused to grant and she’s threatened to cut his private organs off if he did not give her a divorce. Mohammed said that he and Bello had stopped Sanda more than once from stabbing Bello with broken bottles that night, just before he left.

Charges were brought against Sanda’s mother, her brother, and her housemaid for allegedly tampering with the crime scene by cleaning the blood from the floor, but were later dropped.

When the sentence was announced, Maryam Sanda screamed and tried to run away but she was dragged back to court by officials.

Bilyaminu Bello was stabbed to death in 2017 by his wife in a case which made headlines nationwide.