Abu Ali’s death: Family count losses

Mrs Samira Abu Ali, wife of Lt. Colonel Abu Ali, killed by Boko Haram terrorists, along side some soldiers penultimate Friday, has vowed to raise her three children to be like the fallen hero, saying their dad was a nice and caring husband and father.

Mrs Ali, who spoke when a non-governmental organization, NGO, called “Nigerian Fallen Heroes Project 2017”, paid her a condolence visit at her parents home in Kaduna, yesterday, spoke almost inaudibly but the pains she was still enduring was loud and clear.

She said: “My children are very aware that their father is no more, I mean the older ones. “All I have to do now is to commit myself to raising them to the quality that their late father desired of them, so that they can be like him; to become persons this country can be proud of. “It is unfortunate that he left them at such tender ages.

But they will always recall that he was a kind and loving father. Just like he was to me. “I don’t have anything more to say than everything is in the hands of the Almighty Allah.”

Ali left three children namely: Fatimah Abu-Ali 7, Mohammed Abu-Ali 4, and Yasmin Abu-Ali 1. Her father, Alhaji Haruna Adamu, also told the visitors that Ali was a good son-in-law. He said, amidst sobs: “Lt. Col. Abu-Ali was not only an in-law to me, but also a son who had done a lot for me and my family.

We will greatly miss him. “He was great soldier and paid the supreme sacrifice for his country. May he find paradise,” At the family house of Ali, located at No.10 Jabi East, Kaduna North Local Government Area, the matriarch of the family, Hajiya Abu-Ali, could not be consoled, as she wept profusely over the demise of her son.

A younger sister to the slain officer, Amina Abu-Ali, in tears, urged the Federal Government to send soldiers to fight Boko haram on rotational basis so as to allow them spend more time with their families. “My brother had been in Maiduguri for the past two years, and I think the maximum they gave him was two weeks off.

We missed him but there’s nothing we can say rather than that it is his time. We accept it and take it as our fate. The government should please assist the family he left behind which is a very painful thing because when you look at the children today, you lack what to tell them tomorrow,” she said.

A minute silence was observed for the fallen hero. Dr. Kenneth Ibe-Kalu, the leader of ‘Nigerian Fallen Heroes Project 2017’, assured the matriarch that her son did not die in vain.

He said: “We read his last words to the whole world just before he died, ‘I’m proud that I’ve paid the supreme price for my nation’, but he added something that is so captivating: ‘I hope that my country will remember me.’

Culled from Vanguard

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