Meet Veronica John. She is married with 3 Children although she gave birth to 4. On March 11th 2019, at Dogon Noma in Kajuru Local Government area of Kaduna State, she woke up to gun shots. Her husband has a heart problem and also battling Hepatitis, and she wasn’t feeling too well on that day, so they all ran in different directions, looking for where to hide from the Fulanis that had entered their village with guns, machetes and sticks.
She and a group of people were running and heard a voice in Adara telling them to run towards a particular route to be safe. They had no idea at the point that it was some Fulanis who spoke Adara that had laid an ambush. Her 6 year old daughter’s body was shaking so much with fear from the sound of the gun shots, so she backed her and continue running even though she wasn’t feeling well herself. They ran right into the ambush, and the two people right in front of her were killed. She saw them moving towards her and cried for mercy, but a bullet hit her right shoulder. She then asked her daughter to plead for them to spare their lives, thinking the pleas from a child would change their minds. Instead, with her daughter still on her back, they split the 6 year old’s head in 2 and Veronica still has the scar on her back from the impact of the machete. They then cut the fore finger of her right hand and placed it in her daughter’s mouth. When they left, she tried to move towards her now dead daughter but she realized she couldn’t move, so she used her feet to remove the finger from her daughter’s mouth. She had passed out, but when she came to, she realized how badly she had been cut and she couldn’t move till help came much later on. She lay there with her dead daughter and the bodies of others killed, wishing for death as she wondered if her other 3 kids and husband had made it to safety.
Because her husband has been sick, she has been the sole provider of the family. Now she can’t use the right side of her upper body due to complications from the injuries sustained on her right hand. She says it hurts for a cloth to even brush her remaining fingers and she has no feeling in her middle finger since they tried to cut it off as well.
They don’t have food to eat, so school fees is not even up for discussion. When I met them they were literally smelling, due to lack of money to even buy soap for personal hygiene.
Veronica needs to immediately see a doctor to check out her hand. Please, if God lays in your heart to help us get her to a specialist, kindly call any of the numbers at the bottom of this post. Please. We also need to assist her to start a business, so her family can get a sustainable income. She used to farm, but now she can’t and says she would want to open a small shop in the village to sell provisions and grains as there is none at the moment. We are also working to see that her first son starts school on Monday.
