5-yr-old terror survivor cries out: ‘Why should anyone want me dead?’

By AbdulSalam Muhammad, Kano

Margaret Johnson, a five-year-old who survived the terror  attack in Bayero University  Kano (BUK), was surrounded by her parents, Johnson and Halima, and three other  sisters on her hospital bed at the emergency section of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano.

Looking worried perhaps due to the  pains of the bullet lodged in  her back while escaping from the sports hall of BUK that fateful Sunday, she shed tears, and rhetorically asked, ‘why should anyone want me dead?’

This is the story of  Margaret, a nursery pupil of BUK  Staff  School and her three  sisters led by her elder sister, Becky Johnson, a 19-year-old  two hundred level student of  mass communication of Bayero University.

Margaret  said: “God is superior. I saw His hand while escaping  after an explosive was thrown into the hall full of worshippers.

“I escaped into the hands of my elder sister (Becky) who carried  me and flew away  amid shooting and haulage of explosives.”

Miss Margaret Johnson

Becky stated that  she led the  other three  children of  the family  to the church and,  half way in to the mass, “we heard gunshots  all around the hall and what looked  like IEDs started falling in like  confetti.”

According to her,  she climbed the lecture hall like many worshippers only to be confronted by fire coming out of the guns of the attackers  who had  taken position outside the premises and,  miraculously, none  of the bullet hit me except my little sister.”

She  said they ran across the road and took refugee in the neighbourhood, pointing out: “We were moved to hospital by  a good Samaritan when the fire subsided.

I can capture what I saw,   it was  a  bad dream but the big solace is that I survived with all my younger ones  and I have every reason to be grateful to God.”

Another sister, Cynthia Johnson, 15, on her part, revealed that she jumped out of the hall when she heard the first gun shot, adding that she rejoined  with her family at Murtala Muhammad Hospital  after the attack.

Cynthia, a student of Top Quality College, also attributed her escape to God’s  intervention. “I saw the attackers armed with  weapons, firing at worshippers as I ran and galloped  away to safety.”

The head of the family, Mr Johnson, was short of words. He told  Sunday Vanguard, “My mien tells the whole story. Can you imagine how I could have felt if  I lost all these children? “But God is in control, and He knows why I am in Kano and has done everything possible to protect my family.”

Johnson however said that, despite the terror attack,  he was not thinking of relocating to his Ado local government area of Benue State as, according to him, “ my God is not a sleeping God”.