“The principal left me and Oluwasesin in his office and also went there to calm down the Muslim students,” he said. “Knowing that the students may soon come to this office, I pushed Oluwasesin into the bathroom in this office and then locked up the office.”

By the time he had rejoined the principal and other staff members, he said, the entire school was engulfed in uproar. Muslim extremists from outside the school rushed in to join in the unrest.

“They destroyed school property and were demanding that Oluwasesin must be given to them to be stoned to death,” Musa said. “When we could not give in by releasing Oluwasesin to them, they started stoning us.”

Pandemonium prevented school or law enforcement officials from getting Oluwasesin out of the school, he said.

“While we were thinking of ways to take Oluwasesin out of the school, the Muslims broke into the principal’s office and dragged her out,” he said. “The principal rushed there to save her as they clubbed her with an iron on the head and blood was gushing out from the wounded side of the head. He was pleading that they should not kill her, but they were insisting that she must be killed.”

Musa said that the Muslims overcame efforts by the principal and another teacher identified only as Kabiru to protect Oluwasesin.

“The principal succeeded in getting Oluwasesin up to the school gate,” he said. “There was a house near the gate, and he dragged her into the house, but the rioting Muslims went into the house and dragged her out again. This time, they clubbed her to death, brought old mats and placed dirt on her corpse, and then burned the body.”

Quran Unfound 
Musa said he was baffled that throughout the unrest, the copy of the Quran supposed to have been desecrated was never seen, nor was it produced by the offended student.

“Whether the Quran was in the bag of that student, nobody knows,” he said.

Attempts by at least four policemen to quell the unrest had failed as they had been forced to retreat, Musa told Compass.

“The Muslims smashed the car of Oluwasesin, which was parked in the car park attached to the building housing the library, office and some classrooms,” he said. “Her car was set on fire, and soon the entire building went up in flames.”

Along with Oluwasesin’s car, the school library, and other offices near the parking lot were all burned, he said. When the Fire Brigade arrived, he said, Muslims prevented firemen from coming into the school by striking them with stones.

Having killed Oluwasesin, the extremists turned their attention on Musa, who said he had been advised to leave and had done so in time. The extremists set his motorbike on fire, he said, when they realized he had eluded them.

The Government Secondary School of Gandu has a student population of about 4,000, about 10 percent of whom are Christian, Musa said.