On Nov. 12, Osezua’s parents dropped him
off at school at about 7 am and went to their different places of work.
Unfortunately, it was the last time they would see him alive.
About three hours after the Abunemes had
left, they were informed that their son, whom they had left in the care
of a nanny, had been rushed to the Faith City Hospital, breathless.
In disbelief, the couple rushed to the
hospital only to be shown the lifeless body of their son at the
emergency ward, which is situated opposite the school.
Whatever transpired behind the walls of
Osezua’s school within the three-hour interval between the period he
took ill and arrived at the hospital dead, in spite of its proximity to
the school, is shrouded in mystery.
Abuneme said
that when he arrived at the hospital, he instinctively took the lifeless
body of his son and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but
it was in vain.
Although they are grieved at losing
their first and only child, who was hale and hearty a few hours after
they dropped him at school, Osezua’s parents appear to have accepted
their fate with stoic calmness.
As soon as it occurred to him that his
son was dead, Mr. Abuneme contacted a church priest who came to bless
the corpse and prepared it for immediate burial.
He said he had to bury the child and go
back home to grieve, knowing that there was no point dissipating energy
on legal action of any kind.
He said, “I requested an explanation of
what really happened. What they told me was that my son choked when they
were feeding him. We handed him over to one of the nannies, one Ijere
at about 7 am on that day and drove off to work.
“But I learnt that when the other nanny,
Mrs. Dauda came, she asked Ijere why she had Osezua strapped on her
back. The other woman said she had to carry him on her back because
nobody was around when we brought him to the school and she wanted to
do something.
“Dauda said she took my boy from her
colleague and in her words, both she and Osezua slept off. When they
woke up, Osezua started crying and she wanted to give him food. That
morning, my wife had prepared a meal of beans and put it in his pack.
The nanny said she fed him about four spoons of the meal and she was
about to give him the fifth, when the boy choked. Then she raised the
alarm.
“I was told that Mrs. Ijere (who was
actually an auxiliary nurse) said she held the boy upside down in an
attempt to resuscitate him, albeit in a crude way, instead of dashing
across the road to the hospital, which was just within easy reach.”
Masters Ville Children School is very
close to Faith City Hospital. Both institutions are numbered 11 and 16,
respectively, on Asa-Afariogun Street in upscale Ajao Estate, in the
Okota area of Lagos.
But on the second day, the boy’s mother
discovered blood stains on his dress. The clothe had smelt of
mentholatum ointment when it was returned.
The discovery had ticked off an alarm
and the Abunemes decided to unravel the mysterious circumstances
surrounding their son’s sudden death.
“I made up my mind to get to the root of
what happened to my boy. It was not that it would bring him back to
life because I knew that he was gone forever. But I was worried about
other children. The incident happened on Monday and I contacted the
police on Friday. This tells you that my mission is to sensitise other
parents and warn them about what may happen to their children at any
time,” he said.
Abuneme complained that the attitude of
the authorities of the Masters Ville School toward the tragic incident
did not help matters. He said there was no representation from the
school after he buried his child.
He said, “In fact, when people started
coming to commiserate with us at home, some of my friends and family
became curious when they did not see anybody from the school. Some of
them even threatened to storm the school and create a scene, but I
pleaded with them not to do that.
“They insisted on going there, at least
to let the school authorities realise that even if it was a chicken that
died in their poultry, there should be a measure of compassion, let
alone a child. They went and when they came back, they told me that the
school management said they would have come, but they feared that they
might be lynched.
“It was after this that representation
from the school came. When I reported the case at the police station in
the estate, it took the school some time before they could produce the
pair of Ijere and Dauda who repeated the same story that I just narrated
to you.
“I believe the school is hiding
something from us. For instance, the bottled water in my son’s pack was
still intact. Yet, he was fed. How can somebody feed a boy of nine
months without giving him water to drink? Curiously, the hot water,
which my wife put in his flask, was half-full when the pack was brought
home.
“What did they do with the hot water? We
fed the boy with cereal before taking him to school that morning?
Nobody told us anything about blood, so how come there were blood stains
on his dress? What about the mentholatum?
“When I asked why they didn’t take him
to the hospital opposite the school almost immediately, I was told that
they were trying to put him in a bus and were trying to open the gate.
Someone could have held him and dashed across the road to the hospital
in less than one minute.
“When I went back to the hospital, the
doctor told me that he did not have any chance to help the boy because
he was brought in dead. It was the same doctor that took his delivery.
So he is more or less like a member of our family. I can imagine how he
felt about the situation.”
The death certificate issued to Osezua’s
parents, which was made available to our correspondent, showed that the
boy was dead on arrival in the hospital. The document was signed by one
Dr. Okpaleke Kingsley of Faith City Hospital.
The family wrote a petition to the
Commissioner of Police in Lagos State through the Ajao Police Station,
urging the law enforcement agency to find out why their son was left to
die instead of being rushed to the nearby hospital. A few arrests were
made, but the school authorities have been making different
representations to plead with the Abunemes.
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