An 18-year-old pregnant housewife, Khadija Adamu, who was arrested for beating her five-year-old stepdaughter to death, has said she had no intention of killing the little girl.

Khadija said she was only trying to scold the child for defecating on her pants.

DAILY POST reports that the Bauchi State Police Command paraded Khadija on Tuesday for allegedly beating her stepdaughter, Hafsat, to death.

The incident was said to have occurred on September 28, 2023, in the Kandahar area of the Bauchi metropolis.

According to the Police spokesman, SP Ahmed Wakil, the suspect was reported at the A Divisional Police headquarters by her husband, Abdulaziz Adamu, 38, after she beat up the victim “as a result of alleged pass-stool that spoiled her clothes”.

Narrating what led to Hafsat’s death, Khadija, in an interview with our reporter at the Command headquarters, said, “How can I kill a child who was like my child? Even though she was my co-wife’s baby, she was also my daughter because she was my husband’s child.

“What happened was just a mistake and not a deliberate intention to kill.

“I am also a mother, and I am currently four months pregnant with my second child. How can I possibly kill another child? What happened was that this girl defecated on her body, and I felt that at her age, she shouldn’t have done that, so I used a USB cord to beat her with it. It was not as if I had any intention of killing her.

“I didn’t know she would die. I only wanted to correct her. She didn’t die that day I beat her, it was the next day that she died, and I felt very sad and unhappy that she had died.”