Nurse's family demands body release from police custody after three weeks

Mary Habila was twenty-six years old and worked as a nurse at David Umahi Federal University Teaching Hospital in Ebonyi state. On June 27, she died at the residence of David Umahi, Nigeria's minister of works, where she had been assigned to his medical team. Three weeks later, her body remained in police custody, and her family had not been permitted to bury her.

On Friday, standing at the force headquarters in Abuja, Kaile Yusuf, the family's lawyer, made a direct appeal to Olatunji Disu, the inspector-general of police, to order the immediate release of Habila's remains. The family, Yusuf explained, had completed every procedure the Nigerian Police required. They had followed the rules. And still, the body had not been returned to them.

The delay had become a public matter partly because of confusion about who Habila was. Some reports had identified her as a physiotherapist. Yusuf used the briefing to correct the record: Habila was a trained nurse. She had previously worked at David Umahi University of Health Sciences before being deployed to the minister's office, where she served as a civil servant for approximately three years. Her appointment letter and salary records confirmed her employment. Anita Baaki, Habila's colleague, was present to clarify further—Baaki was the physiotherapist. Habila had been the nurse.

The core dispute centered on an autopsy. The police and the minister insisted that a post-mortem examination was necessary to establish the cause of death. The family refused, citing personal, cultural, and traditional reasons. They saw no justification for the continued retention of the body. Yusuf alleged that some individuals were attempting to politicize the circumstances surrounding her death, and the family had petitioned the IGP against the Ebonyi state commissioner of police, seeking intervention to break the impasse.

Tanko Habila, Mary's father, spoke with the directness of grief. "I don't have much to talk in this case," he said. "All I want is the corpse of my daughter. We don't keep corpse of little children for so long like this." He was not accusing anyone. The family maintained a cordial relationship with her workplace. He simply wanted to take his daughter home for burial. That was what he was standing on.

Yusuf made another point during the briefing, one that suggested the family felt their daughter's reputation was being questioned in the silence. "Mary Habila has never been a runs girl or whatever," he said. "She has been in Abuja working with the minister before her eventful death, and this is the truth." The need to say this publicly, to defend a dead woman's character at a police headquarters, spoke to something unspoken in the case—the weight of assumption and rumor that had accumulated around her death.

The standoff remained unresolved. The minister had directed that the body should not be released until the autopsy was conducted. The family held firm in their refusal. Three weeks had passed since June 27. A young woman lay in custody while her family waited for permission to grieve her properly, and the machinery of investigation and procedure ground on, indifferent to the calendar or to a father's need to bury his child.