The school was already closed.
The police had already arrested suspects.
The government had already ordered the school shut.
Yet, in the early hours of Monday, January 24, 2022, people returned to the premises of Noble Kids Comprehensive College in Kano and set parts of the building on fire.
That was the moment public anger over Hanifa Abubakar’s murder took a physical form.
The fire was not simply about a school building. It was about what that building had come to represent to the people of Kwanar Dakata after the discovery of a murdered five year old girl.
But there was an extraordinary complication.
The property itself was reportedly not owned by the man accused of killing Hanifa.
Residents who spoke to Nigerian Tribune condemned the destruction for precisely that reason. The school proprietor, Abdulmalik Tanko, was reportedly using a rented building.
That overlooked detail changes the story of the fire.
The Building Had Become a Symbol
Noble Kids Comprehensive College stood in Kwanar Dakata, in Nassarawa Local Government Area of Kano State.
For the community, it had been a school.
After Hanifa’s disappearance and the revelations that followed, it became something else.
It became the physical place most closely associated with a shocking betrayal.
Hanifa had been a pupil at the school. Tanko, the man police identified as the principal suspect, was its proprietor. Investigators later said Hanifa’s remains had been buried at a school premises connected to him.
By January 2022, the distinction between the man, the school and the crime had become blurred in public perception.
The building had acquired the weight of the entire tragedy.
And once that happened, the school itself became vulnerable to the anger surrounding Hanifa’s death.
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The First Attempt Did Not Succeed
The January 24 fire was not necessarily the first time people had tried to attack the school.
According to Vanguard, youths had attempted to burn the building several days earlier but were prevented by security personnel who had been deployed to maintain order around the premises.
That detail is important because it shows that the final fire was not an entirely spontaneous reaction that appeared from nowhere.
Tensions had already been building around the school.
The discovery of Hanifa’s remains had changed the atmosphere around the premises, and security personnel had apparently recognized that the building could become a target.
Then the protection failed.
The Night the Crowd Returned
According to residents interviewed by Nigerian Tribune, the youths came around 1 a.m.
Most people in the neighbourhood were asleep when the fire started.
By morning, the upper floor of the one storey building had been extensively damaged.
Residents and the Kano State Fire Service intervened to prevent the fire from destroying more of the property. Police spokesman Abdullahi Kiyawa confirmed that the incident had occurred during the night and that there had been no casualty. At that point, police had not announced any arrest over the arson.
There was something particularly striking about the timing.
The school was no longer operating.
The government had already closed it.
There were no children inside attending classes.
The fire therefore served no practical purpose connected to the investigation.
It was an expression of anger.
Why This Particular Building?
The answer lies in association.
Hanifa’s case had created an unbearable connection between a school and the death of one of its pupils.
The public knew that Tanko was the proprietor of Noble Kids. Reports said he had used his position and relationship with the child as part of the circumstances surrounding her abduction.
The discovery of Hanifa’s remains on school premises made the physical environment even more disturbing.
For people looking at the building from outside, the school was no longer simply walls, classrooms and a gate.
It had become the place where the story of Hanifa’s disappearance appeared to converge.
That symbolic association helps explain why the building became the target.
But it does not mean that everything connected with the building belonged to the accused.
The Property Was Reportedly Rented
This was the detail residents wanted people to remember.
When Nigerian Tribune visited the school after the fire, residents said the building did not belong to Tanko.
They said he was the proprietor of the school but not the owner of the structure itself.
One resident, identified as Malam Ibrahim Muhammad, said people in the area woke up to discover that the property had been burned and expressed the view that the destruction was not justified because the school proprietor was not the property owner.
That distinction rarely survives when public anger reaches its peak.
A business can carry the name of its proprietor.
A building can become identified with that business.
And once a terrible crime becomes associated with both, the physical property can become a substitute target.
That appears to be what happened in Kano.
The Fire Came After the Government Had Already Acted
There was another reason the burning of the school was significant.
The Kano State Government had already taken action against the institution.
On January 21, authorities ordered the immediate closure of the school following the revelations surrounding Hanifa’s death.
The state had therefore already removed the school from operation.
Three days later, the building was attacked.
The difference is important.
The government response was administrative.
The youths’ response was physical.
One involved shutting down an institution.
The other involved destroying part of a building.
The two responses emerged from the same public outrage, but they represented completely different ways of responding to the crisis.
The Anger Was Bigger Than the School
By January 24, the outrage over Hanifa’s death had spread far beyond Kwanar Dakata.
The case had generated intense national attention and the hashtag had circulated widely
The Kano government was facing enormous pressure to demonstrate that the suspects would be prosecuted.
The school fire happened on the same day the state announced another extraordinary measure: the withdrawal of certificates of operation for private schools across Kano State, requiring them to undergo revalidation before continuing operations.
The government established a process involving the Ministry of Justice, the Department of State Services, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, private school representatives and other stakeholders.
That response showed how the Hanifa case had expanded into a question about the supervision of private schools.
But the fire itself was different.
It was not a government policy.
It was a community reaction.
A School Became the Focus of Collective Grief
There is a reason buildings associated with major tragedies often become emotionally powerful.
They provide a physical location for something that is otherwise difficult to comprehend.
Hanifa was a child.
Her death was horrifying.
The anger surrounding the case was enormous.
But anger has no physical shape.
A school does.
Its gate can be approached.
Its walls can be seen.
Its rooms can be entered.
For those who wanted to express their fury, Noble Kids offered a physical object onto which the emotion surrounding Hanifa’s death could be projected.
That appears to have been why the school became the target.
The fire turned the building into a visible representation of the anger that had been building throughout the community.
But Burning the School Could Not Change What Had Happened
By the time the fire started, the investigation had already moved forward.
The police had arrested Tanko and other suspects.
The authorities had recovered Hanifa’s remains.
The Kano government had closed the school.
The suspects were being taken through the legal process.
The same day as the fire, Tanko, Hashim Isyaku and Fatimah Jibril were arraigned before a Kano magistrates’ court on charges including criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, concealing or keeping a kidnapped person in confinement and culpable homicide.
The fire could not recover Hanifa.
It could not establish guilt.
It could not determine a sentence.
It could only destroy part of the place that had become associated with the tragedy.
And because the building was reportedly rented, its destruction also raised another question: who else would bear the consequences of the public fury?
The People Who Objected to the Fire
Not everyone in the neighbourhood supported what happened.
That is another part of the story that deserves attention.
Residents who spoke to Nigerian Tribune condemned the arson even while acknowledging the anger over Hanifa’s murder. They emphasized that the property was reportedly not owned by Tanko.
Their reaction demonstrates that public grief was not uniform.
People could be horrified by Hanifa’s murder and still believe that burning the building was wrong.
That distinction is important because the community was not simply divided into those who wanted justice and those who did not.
Many wanted the same thing: accountability for the people responsible for Hanifa’s death.
The disagreement was over what should happen next.
The Fire Revealed a Deeper Problem
The destruction of Noble Kids exposed something that the murder itself had already revealed: trust can collapse very quickly when a person entrusted with children is accused of becoming involved in their harm.
Schools depend on trust more than most institutions.
Parents hand over their children.
Teachers receive authority.
Proprietors control the environment.
Communities assume that these relationships exist to protect children.
When that expectation is shattered, the damage is not confined to one victim.
Parents begin questioning schools.
Communities become suspicious.
Government regulators face pressure.
And institutions associated with the accused can become symbols of the betrayal.
That is what happened to Noble Kids.
The school became inseparable in the public imagination from the tragedy surrounding Hanifa.
The Image That Remained
By the morning after the fire, people gathered around the damaged building.
The classrooms were no longer simply classrooms.
The upper portion of the structure had been blackened.
Windows had been shattered.
The place that had once represented education now carried the physical marks of public fury.
Yet the most revealing part of the scene was not necessarily the damage.
It was what the damage represented.
A five year old girl had died.
Her community was furious.
The government had intervened.
The police investigation had produced suspects.
And before the courts could determine the final outcome, public anger had already reached the walls of the school.
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What the Fire Left Behind
The burning of Noble Kids Comprehensive College became one of the most memorable images of the Hanifa case, but it should not be mistaken for the central event.
It was the consequence of everything that had come before it.
The disappearance.
The search.
The discovery of the grave.
The revelation of the connection between Hanifa and the school proprietor.
The closure of the school.
The fear and anger that followed.
Then, in the darkness of January 24, the fire.
What makes the incident especially striking is the contradiction at its centre.
The people who burned the school were reacting to a genuine tragedy.
But residents said the building itself belonged to someone other than the accused proprietor.
The school had become a symbol, and symbols can attract emotions far beyond the facts they represent.
That is why the fire deserves to be remembered separately from the murder itself.
It was the moment when public grief became physical.
Author’s Note
The burning of Hanifa’s school was the clearest physical expression of the anger that followed her murder. By the time youths set Noble Kids Comprehensive College ablaze in the early hours of January 24, 2022, the school had already been closed by the Kano State Government and the criminal investigation was underway. Yet the building had become a powerful symbol of the tragedy because Hanifa had been its pupil and the accused proprietor was connected to it. The most overlooked detail is that residents said the building itself was not owned by Tanko. That made the fire more complicated than a simple act of retaliation. It was a moment when grief, outrage and the desire for justice converged on a physical place that had come to represent everything the community believed had gone terribly wrong.
References
The Channels Television report on the burning of Noble Kids Comprehensive College, January 24, 2022.
The Nigerian Tribune report on residents’ condemnation of the arson and the reported ownership of the school building, January 24, 2022.
The PUNCH report on the burning of the school and police confirmation of the incident, January 24, 2022.
The Vanguard report on the earlier attempt by youths to burn the school and the subsequent attack, January 24, 2022.
The Guardian report on the overnight fire and police response, January 24, 2022.
The Nation report on the destruction of the school and the circumstances surrounding the property, January 24, 2022.
Channels Television report on the Kano State Government’s withdrawal of private school operating certificates, January 24, 2022.
Channels Television report on the arraignment of the suspects, January 24, 2022.
