by Akan Ido

The household of former Police Affairs ministerr, Ibrahim Yakubu Lame, was thrown into mourning onTuesday as his two year old daughter and her one year old cousin died after getting suffocated in a locked car.

Tnhe two toddlers died in the car after getting trapped in the car for about an hour without being noticed.

Whole narrating the sad experience to Daily Trust, the grieving fathers, Dr. Lame and Abubakar Isah Tahir said the sad incident happened around 1:30 pm on Tuesday.

Lame said, “The house driver came back around 1.30pm and when the children saw him while they were playing in the compound pleaded with him to take them out for a drive. The driver, who wanted to put them off, told them not to worry and should let him pray and come back, so while he left to pray, they decided to enter the car.

“Farida my daughter was two years old and Sabir (Isah’s alias) her cousin was one year old, so they got into the car.”

According to the former minister, the car has ‘child lock mechanism,’ which shuts automatically so there was no way they could open the car from the inside.

“Nobody noticed they were inside. Initially he told them he was going to pray but had no intention of coming back, and after his prayer he started sleeping,” Lame said.

By the time he discovered them after more than one hour of their being in the car, they were already dead.

The lifeless children were confirmed dead at a hospital in Gwarinpa.

Lame was appointed Senior Special Assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo in August 1999, and appointed Minister of Police Affairs by President Umaru Yar’Adua in December 2008.