KADUNA, Nigeria—The funeral took place on a sunny, late March morning in Goska, a village in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state. Against the backdrop of mud homes covered with corrugated zinc roofing, people bustled down the single dusty road that runs through the town to a patch of land next to a church. Hundreds formed a crowd around a brown casket to bury 50-year-old Gideon Morik, a community leader who died on March 16.
One of Gideon’s solemn-faced wives made her way silently to the center of the field. She dabbed her face with a handkerchief as she placed a vase of flowers on top of the casket. “I miss him,” she mumbled in the Hausa language, which is dominant in northern Nigeria, then sat beside her mother-in-law, tears running down her cheeks. “Today is a bad day, very bad day for us.”
Listen to Linus Unah discuss this article on WPR's Trend Lines Podcast. His audio begins at 22:57: