Kano mysterious deaths: Ekhomu rejects Presidential Task Force verdict

President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria, AISSON Dr. Ona Ekhomu, has faulted the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 verdict which attributed the mysterious deaths in Kano State to the CoronaVirus disease, saying the methods used to arrive at the conclusion did not conform with forensic pathology methodology.

Ekhomu, stated rather, that, the panel should have conducted conventional autopsies on the bodies to determine Coronavirus disease, saying, “the so-called verbal autopsies are unscientific, have no validity, no reliability and certainly are not reproducible”.

The security expert further stated that “ relying on the age of victims was mere profiling (a class characteristic) and did not constitute an individualized explanation of the deaths. The report by the taskforce blaming Covid-19 was fatally flawed, did not reach the threshold of forensic pathology, and should not have made such a weighty conclusion”.

He, therefore, urged it to suspend its final report, suggesting that a crack team of forensic pathologists be deployed to conduct a normal forensic examination on the victims, where their internal organs should be examined, as well as toxicology test, alongside other death investigation protocols.

Stating emphatically that the cause of the death in Kano could not be Corona Virus Disease, Ekhomu, said, “ it behoves on the Federal Government to determine what is killing Nigerians in Kano. With my forensic science knowledge, I can guess that there is an epidemic (not COVID-19) ravaging communities in Kano. It is the responsibility of the federal government to send medical detectives to Kano, accompanied by crack Police detectives to unravel the mystery.

“Possible causes of the mysterious deaths in Kano include Lassa fever, tuberculosis, kidney malfunction epidemic, ebola fever, adulterated hard drugs, some unknown pathogen, etc. The deaths could have originated from a breach in the food supply chain or even malevolent tampering with medicines. The proper thing is to conduct medical examination of the human remains to determine exact cause of death (COD), while police detectives figure out if the deaths were from natural causes or from foul play”.

He emphasized the need for forensic pathologists and not virologists or epidemiologists to be given the responsibility to investigate the mysterious Kano deaths, saying, “death investigation is a serious matter and should not be trivialized. NCDC personnel are currently overburdened by Covid-19 pandemic and most of them are virologists and epidemiologists and have no credentials in morbid anatomy or medical examination. If the person doing the forensic pathology knows a lot about it, then it is worthy of belief”.

Noting that the rate of deaths among other factors indicated that Covid-19 was not the culprit, he, therefore, warned that “ Nigerian scientists must not adopt the talking points of politicians. Scientists belong to an epistemic community that must be trusted, as well as resist the temptation to pander to politicians. Their only job right now is to serve the citizens of Nigeria and use their skills to save lives, especially now that we are facing a global pandemic. When scientists start echoing the words and sentiments of politicians, then we will be in trouble in Nigeria.”

“The National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC medical detectives and the entire medical science community must be committed to their professional ethics and methods”, he stated, even as he advised Nigerians to observe social distancing, personal hygiene and wear face masks in public to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus.