By Suzan Edeh
If Mallam Bala Mohammed Dierba had known that cleaning the well in his compound will lead to the death of three persons, he surely would have changed his mind and dropped the idea. But being human with no ability to see into the future, except by divine revelation, he acted.

What happened is a heart- rendering story that threw the entire residents in Jahun quarters, a suburb of Bauchi metropolis, into mourning, leaving pain and sorrow in their hearts. More pathetic about the incident is that the three persons lost their lives on the same day and in the same house.

On that fateful day, Mallam Bala Mohammed, the owner of a bungalow in Jahun quarters, decided that it was time for him to clean up the well in the compound where he and his family have been living for up to 30 years. Although, the well was not very deep, it has what many believe to be the God-given attribute of being able,  during the dry season, to retain water in it and people from the neighbourhood usually troop into the compound to fetch water for their daily domestic needs.

*Adamu, Salisu & Yahaya Mohammed

Vanguard Metro, VM, gathered that the unfortunate incident that led to the death of three healthy young men happened when the owner of the house, Mallam Bala gave the contract of cleaning the well in his compound to one Mallam Mohammed Gudum who instead of doing the job himself, directed his son, Salisu Mohammed, to do it.

After finishing the usual plastering of the walls of the well to prevent cracking, Salisu then brought in a generator  to pump water out of the well. But he made the fatal mistake of placing the generator inside the well rather than outside because the pipe connected to it was short.

Unfortunately the place Salisu was working in the well had no passage for the fumes of the generator to go out. As he started the generator, all the dirt in the well started coming out. It was in the process of trying to remove the dirt that Salisu died from inhaling the fumes coming out of the generator.

Palpable anxiety and panic had set in at Mallam Bala’a’s residence after Salisu failed to come out of the well. In a bid to find out what happened to Salisu, one of his colleagues, Yahaya Mohammed who was assisting him to do the job, decided to enter the well.

But this turned out tragic as  Yahaya also failed to come  out. Unknown to those waiting anxiously, he too had lost  consciousness after inhaling the killer fumes. The whole drama took another dimension when one  Abdullahi  Dajin, a 45-year- old man and one Adamu  volunteered to go into the well to bring out the victims with the aid of a rope.

But with death still lurking menacingly in the well, the two men soon found out they had made a grievous mistake. After successfully bringing  the victims out of the well, they too, could not come out  as they also inhaled the fumes from the generator.

At this time, the attention of the people outside the well was concentrated on the victims that had just been brought out. Abdullahi tried to come out of the well, but when he almost reached the top of the well, he slipped and fell back inside, landing on top of Adamu who died instantly.

But as fate would have it, Abdullahi eventually emerged the only  survivor  out of the four individuals that went into the well. His survival was confirmed by a Ward head, Mallam Shu’aibu Barde.

When VM visited Malam Bala Mohammed, he lamented that since the incident, he has not been himself and that he is now scared of the well and the entire house. He further added that the SSS has since launched an investigation into the matter.

But he is  of the belief that putting the generator into the well caused  the tragedy. A  medical doctor, Labaran Dattijo with the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital attributed the death of the three victims to the poisonous carbon monoxide substance in the generator fumes.

He said that when a generator is placed in a secluded area where the fumes have no enough passage into the air and a human being inhales the carbon monoxide from the generator, it enters into the human system and blocks oxygen from getting into the body, thereby resulting to the death of the person involved.

According to the medical doctor: “ It was because of the carbon monoxide inside the well that the first two victims lost consciousness and could not come out of the well.

The last two people that later went into the well to rescue the victims also lost consciousness because of the fumes in the well which they also inhaled. Since carbon monoxide is a dangerous poison that can kill a human being, people should be careful how they use generators to avoid suffocating as a result of lack oxygen, particularly these days that there is inadequate power from PHCN”.

He further advised that people should always put their generators far from their doors to where there will be enough air to carry the fumes away. They should not put their generators inside their houses the way the victims did, resulting in their death.