A widow, Tawakaltu Shekoni, has dragged her four adult stepchildren to a Shari’a Court in Kaduna over an intense inheritance dispute regarding her late husband’s property and her daughter’s share of the estate.
In a heated legal confrontation over familial estate rights, a widow, Tawakaltu Shekoni, has officially dragged her four adult stepchildren—Shehu Abdulsalam, Abubakar Abdulsalam, Abdulsalam Abdulsalam, and Lawal Abdulsalam—before a Shari’a Court sitting in Kaduna over the estate of her late husband, Muhammad Abdulsalam.
Presenting her case through her legal representative, Muhammad Uthman, the complainant stated that her husband passed away on December 20, 2025, following a brief illness, leaving behind a surviving wife and six children.
Uthman informed the court that the four eldest children, who are the primary defendants in the suit, have persistently refused to allocate to Shekoni and her six-year-old daughter their legitimate shares of the deceased’s estate.
The complainant’s counsel further alleged that the stepchildren had already unilaterally sold off and distributed a significant portion of the deceased’s property among themselves, while currently occupying one of his primary residential buildings located in the Kabalan Doki area of Kaduna.
Urging judicial intervention, Uthman prayed the court to enforce a formal and equitable redistribution of the entire estate in accordance with Islamic law. In response, defense counsel I.O. Usman countered the claims, stating that his clients previously denied knowing Shekoni and dismissed all her assertions as entirely unfounded.
Following a previous judicial directive instructing the complainant to produce concrete witnesses verifying her marital union to the deceased, Shekoni presented two siblings of her late husband, Yusuf Abdulsalam and Kudirat Abdulsalam, before the court.
Testifying under oath, the siblings confirmed the marriage took place in Lagos State in 2015 and submitted photographic evidence of the wedding ceremony.
They testified that the union produced one child and affirmed that the couple was never divorced prior to the husband’s death. Despite the testimony, the defense maintained that the complainant had been separated from their father a year before his passing.
The presiding judge subsequently adjourned the suit to August 18, 2026, granting the complainant additional time to present further supporting witnesses.
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