The convict said for seven months,his wife only allowed him access to her three times.

A Maiduguri High Court ruled yesterday that Abubakar Goni should be hang by his neck until he is certified dead, declaring that he used a kitchen knife to stab his wife on several parts of her body until she died because she refused to have sexual intercourse with him around 3:00am on October 22, 2003. The presiding judge, Justice Abdullahi Sanya Yerima, said the man committed culpable homicide punishable with death as provided for in Section 221(b) of the Penal Code..

Goni had during his arraignment told the court that the marriage between him and late Amsa was contracted by his father against his wish, but he accepted his father’s decision in good faith and endured to live with the wife despite her “stubbornness”. He said, “My father married Amsa for me. I never knew her before then but I accepted her as my wife in good faith. During our married life, which lasted for seven months, she disregarded and disrespected me. Whenever I wanted to have sex with her, she refused. For the seven months we lived together, we only had sex three times. I reported her conduct to my father several times, but he begged me to approach her gently as she was still a small girl. My father even reported her to her father, who personally advised her on two occasions”, parts of his statement to the police read.

Goni said on that day, around 2:00am while they were asleep in the same room within his father’s compound where they lived, his late wife repeated her usual turn down.

“I demanded to have sex with her, but she refused. I begged her several times but she still refused. I then left her inside the room, went out and searched for a knife, which I got in the kitchen. I took possession of the knife and went back to the room with annoyance and stabbed her several times at different places,” he confessed.

In his testimony, Goni’s father, Alhaji Goni Umara, said an unusual sound woke him from sleep in the night and he rushed to the scene and found his son with a knife, who told him that he had stabbed his wife. Bintu Goni Umara, a step mother of the husband said, “The knife used by Goni in stabbing his wife belongs to me, and on that day, I left it in the kitchen.” The judge said he convicted Goni as charged even though his counsel pleaded for leniency on ground of age, being a first time offender, and the fact that Goni was legally married to the deceased but was denied sexual intercourse. The counsel said sex is an undisputable right in marriage and refusing Goni made him to act in anger and frustration.

But Justice Abdullahi Sanya Yerima insisted that the act was a grave and heinous crime and the section under which he was charged provides no option.

In another homicide case heard in the court, one Fadimatu Ibrahim who was accused of killing her husband, Ibrahim Usman, by stabbing him on the chest with a knife was freed.

Fadimatu, a native of Baram in Hawul Local Government Area of Borno State, was said to have stabbed her husband with a knife on May 17, 2004 and was charged with culpable homicide, which is not punishable with death as provided under section 224 of the Penal Code.

Justice Sanya discharged and acquitted Fadimatu for want of evidence. According to him, the prosecutor failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty of the offence as required in any homicide case, saying there was no proof that Usman died or that Fadimatu caused his death as earlier filed in the case of no submission by the defence counsel, Barrister A. Shettima.