“He was no longer capable of being their father because he had become a Christian.” From Compass Direct:
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, October 9 (Compass Direct News) — It has been more than a year since Allabe Kaku Chibok lost his three daughters because he became a Christian — paradoxically, he lost custody of them only after his ex-wife died.
An Islamic court in this city in the northern state of Borno granted custody to Chibok’s wife’s Muslim relatives after a chain of events that began in November 2004, when he allowed his daughters to attend the funeral service of their mother; she had divorced him when he left Islam.
The girls stayed for a week with Muslim relatives at his former wife’s house, but when Chibok arrived there to take them to school, he found that a retired female police officer, Hajiya Maryam Aliyu, had helped his ex-wife’s Muslim relatives abduct them.
Not knowing the whereabouts of his Christian daughters, Chibok on December 8, 2004 petitioned the Borno State police commissioner, asking that his three daughters be found and rescued from Aliyu.
Chibok, now 50, had kept custody of the children after Malama Botul Grema divorced him in 1996, and when she remarried in 2000 he had maintained custody of Zara, now 14, Fati, now 12, and 11-year-old Aisha.
A member of the Church of Christ in Nigeria in the Gambaru area of Maiduguri, Chibok told the police commissioner that his efforts to rescue the girls had met with the blunt assertion that he was no longer capable of being their father because he had become a Christian.