For the very first time since the reintroduction of...

For the very first time since the reintroduction of the Shari'ah legal system in Nigeria, a man, Sani Rodi, was sentenced to death by knifing. The knife is to be the very same one with which the accused took the lives of a housewife and two of her children in June.
The victims were pharmacist Zainab Hamza Kankia, the wife of the Katsina State director of security, Alhaji Yusuf Hamza, and their two children.
The ruling was passed on Rodi after the husband and father of the victims, and his younger brother, Mustapha, who were the principal prosecution witnesses, swore 25 times each by the Holy Koran in affirmation of the crime as asked by the trial judge, Khadi Al-Mustapha Darma.
Rodi had pleaded not guilty during his trial at the Katsina city Shari'ah court, where he was alleged to have been arrested in blood-stained clothes with a double-edged knife on the day the victims were killed.