The Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Dalhatu Bafarawa,...

The Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Dalhatu Bafarawa, said that he would write a letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo, asking him to explain why the Federal Government issued a passport to Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu to enable her attend a ceremony in Rome, Italy, organised in her honour by the city's mayor, Walter Veltroni. Safiya Hussaini, an indigene of Sokoto State was discharged and acquitted in March by the Upper Sharia Court of Appeal in Sokoto, which overturned the Gwadabawa Upper Sharia Court ruling that convicted her to death by stoning for adultery.Speaking on the issue during an interview with the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Governor Bafarawa pointed out that being fully aware of Safiya's invitation to Rome, he wrote to the Director of the State Security Service and the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), asking them not to issue a passport to Safiya Tungar-Tudu. The governor, however, alleged that following the state immigration command's refusal to give the passport to her, the Minister of Women Affairs and Youth Development, Aisha Isma'il, sent a delegation to accompany Safiya to Abuja and provided her with the passport for the trip. He added that Safiya had already left the country before they could make any attempt to foil the trip and therefore the [Sokoto] government should not be blamed for this. Abdulfatah Isyaka, counsel to Safiya Hussaini during her trial, confirmed that his client had arrived Rome to attend an occasion organised in her honour by Mayor Veltroni. According to him, both her parents and all those who are supposed to be contacted on the trip have been informed, saying she will be back in the next two weeks. But the father of Safiya, Malam Hussaini and her husband, Mohammed Sani, respectively, denied any knowledge on the trip.They argued that she just informed them of her intention to go to Sokoto, "until now she is yet to return back home," they said.