The family of late Afolabi Mabogunje, one of Nigeria’s brightest computer engineers and a PhD holder, had the bitter experience of Nigeria’s deepening insecurity and pitiable healthcare system on September 9, 2021. Their gifted son could not survive a severe early morning stabbing by hoodlums near Anthony village in Lagos.
On that fateful Thursday morning, September 9 by 5am, Afolabi Oladele Mabogunje, a cyclist and a member of Cycology Club, had arrived at Shodex area in Anthony along Ikorodu Road, their usual meeting point to wait for his co-cyclists for their regular morning exercise.
While waiting, hoodlums riding on a motorbike (Okada) accosted him and immediately stabbed him several times at the black spot. The hoodlums left Mabogunje on the ground in a pool of blood and made away with his phone, Temitope George, secretary of Cycology Club narrated.
Even when Lagos State government had severally banned Okada from plying certain routes, including Ikorodu Road for various reasons, which include checkmating crimes and accidents, Okada riders freely move on that road in the face of policemen who are strategically positioned on that route.
After sustaining the cuts, Mabogunje, managed to get up and with one hand (as he was covering the wounds with the other hand) took his bicycle, rode to a nearby GT Bank where he borrowed a phone to call his wife who arrived within minutes, according to Temitope George.
The wife, Abimbola who is a medical director at Massey Children’s Hospital, Lagos, arrived at the scene, and immediately took him to Gbagada General Hospital where the wounds were sutured. However, he needed a cardiothoracic surgeon (a specialist who operates on the heart, lungs and other thoracic (chest, organs), the colleague further said in a sober voice.
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Mabogunje was then taken to LASUTH critical care unit where he required blood as he had lost much blood through bleeding. Unfortunately, the hospital was said to lack blood. He had lost a considerable amount of blood. He did not make it out of the hospital alive. A big loss to the family, society and Nigeria!
Mabogunje, an intelligent and bright manager who had worked abroad before returning to Nigeria where he worked for both Globacom and MTN before running his own business, was simply a victim of the twin problems of insecurity and poor healthcare system in Nigeria that have also caused the death of many Nigerians in the recent past.
Mabogunje’s son, Gbenga who is also an electrical engineer captured the Nigerian environment where his father died succinctly when he said, “I looked at the situation, Nigeria has failed. We should be protecting the people that add value to this country, not killing them.
“When we have people who value mobile phones over lives, we have a problem. When patients wait for hours before they are treated, we have a problem,” he said, sobbing for the loss of his father.
He reminded the government that this is their country and the citizens are their people, they need to fix the country, help the people and save lives.
“The vicious circle of insecurity in Nigeria has diminished public confidence in the government. This feeds the helplessness even further. And as people are afraid to move around freely in the country, many opportunities in business are being lost”, Charles Omole, CEO, Prodel Global Services said in his write-up on Ten economic consequences of growing insecurity in Nigeria as published in Financial Nigeria site.
The alleged delays at the hospital happened to a man who had the money, connections and influence as his wife and sisters were doctors much less when a common man is involved
Depressed and disheartened Mabogunje family has blamed the delay experienced at LASUTH for the death of their dear son with immense value to the society. The deceased’s younger sister, Olusola Oyekunle, who is a consultant in Obstetrics and Gynecology was reported to have said that Mabogunje might have survived the injuries but for alleged systemic failure at LASUTH.
A media report quotes his younger sister as narrating how Mabogunje was stabbed on both sides of the neck, right side of his chest and left arm, adding that on the right side, a gory wound set the internal jugular vein apart from other structures.
Ordinarily, common medical knowledge indicates that a patient who has sustained such serious injuries from stabbing at critical parts of the body needs quick intervention, but this, according to Mabogunje’s colleagues and family members, was late in coming as he died Wednesday, September 15, six days after the attack.
Also detailing the incident in a media report, Olusola Oyekunle said Mabogunje’s wife took him to Gbagada General Hospital at about 5.30am. At the hospital, they sutured the smaller wounds, gave him IV Fluids but the hospital did not have a cardiothoracic surgeon on ground for the neck wound. “So he had to be transferred to LASUTH, which had cardiothoracic surgeons. When we got to LASUTH, one of the surgeons was on ground.
“The surgeon and everyone who would work on him had been alerted. Afolabi (Mabogunje) was put in the emergency room when we got to LASUTH. We needed four pints of blood. We got to the blood bank and they said they didn’t have blood. His co-cyclists went to the blood bank to donate blood. They couldn’t bleed them because of the ongoing ARD (Association of Resident Doctors) strike.
“We had to call the director of the Blood Banking Services in Lagos and we were directed to go to Gbagada Hospital. They had to take Afolabi’s blood sample there to cross match. Seyilayo (one of his friends) drove back to Gbagada to get blood and come back. Blood cross matching takes up to 30 minutes to one hour. He was held in morning traffic.”
Oyekunle in the report further said while they were waiting for the blood, another blood sample was sent to the laboratory for testing, noting that Mabogunje was not taken to the theatre on time as the blood sample had not been processed.
She added, “We went to the lab to get the results but they had not done the test. We had to wait for them to do the test. He needed to do an X-ray within the hospital but they could not provide an ambulance to move him to the unit. They were asking us to be patient.
“We finally got into the theatre about 1pm and then there was an outage. We waited for about five minutes before power was restored and it went off again. The surgery eventually started about 1.30pm for a man who sustained injuries at 5am and got to LASUTH at 8am. That was the delay that changed the story. If he had got blood within 30 minutes he got to LASUTH perhaps he would have survived”.
She explained in the report that “there are three types of delay that cause mortality. The phase one is if the patient does not make a decision to seek medical help on time. The phase two delay is if there is no hospital nearby. Afolabi had neither of such delays. But there was a massive phase three delay at LASUTH and that is a systemic problem. He battled the robbers, he fought for his life, we battled the system and systemic failures, everything that could go wrong went wrong.”
The bereaved sister said Mabogunje didn’t recover from anesthesia an hour after the surgery and was transferred to the intensive care unit of the hospital.
She said the family was assured that he would regain consciousness by the next morning but his condition worsened until he gave up on Wednesday, September 15.
Unfortunately, the alleged delays at the hospital happened to a man who had the money, connections and influence as his wife and sisters were doctors much less when a common man is involved but LASUTH Chief Medical Director, Adetokunbo Fabamwo was, however, quoted in a report as denying knowledge of any delay in Mabogunje’s treatment.
During a protest on Saturday, September 25, by members of Cycology Club against the incidents leading to Mabogunje’s death, Moyosore Onigbanjo, Lagos commissioner for justice and attorney-general, promised the state government would do everything to bring the perpetrators of the dastardly act to justice.
According to Onigbanjo, being at the protest was troubling for him because the government has a primary responsibility to protect the citizens.
His health counterpart, Akin Abayomi, who was also at the protest at Anthony, promised to investigate all that may have transpired LASUTH
“As far as this case is concerned, we are going to interrogate it and where things may have gone wrong, I can assure you that we are going to put the information out there and the lessons learnt would make sure that this kind of event becomes less of an occurrence in Lagos,” he said.
Unending insecurity in Nigeria
Insecurity in Nigeria is neither ending nor abating and the government appears to be helpless without concrete and lasting solutions to it. Shooting, kidnapping, murder targeted at individuals and sometimes at entire villages is a norm in Nigeria without government blinking an eye.
The emergence of Boko Haram and its armed insurgency since 2009, has changed the political, economic, security and socio-cultural landscape of Nigeria according to Lai Mohammed in a paper he presented to House of Commons, London, September 8, 2014 when he was national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He recognised then that Boko Haram is a “crises” because it is no longer a single event but multiple intertwined crises. The government promised to deal with the issue of insecurity but has not succeeded in spite of huge sums of money spent.
