By Anonymous
This thing I had heard had happened to other people, and yet, couldn’t truly appreciate the horror of it until I found myself caught in the throes of it.
This face of Nigeria that is inept, grotesque, unjust and inhumane.
Especially when it shows that face to people who truly believe in the greatness and future of the country.
People who refuse to relocate abroad, and will rather stay here to slug it out, whilst their family live abroad.
It started late in the evening when the niece of a cousin ran to my room to tell me that my cousin, in his early sixties, who was on his way abroad to visit his wife and children, was not responding to her repeated entreaties.
He had come in from his base in the South South with his niece, two days earlier, to forestall any incidences of local flight postponement, in order not to miss his international flight and was staying with his niece in my home.
I hurried after her into the washroom where he was seated on the toilet and noticed instantly that not only was he unconscious but that his head was hung to one side of his neck and he was dribbling saliva from his mouth, which was slacked to one side.
Quickly I called for my driver and we both lifted him off the toilet, while upon my instruction his niece called his wife who works as a nurse abroad. When she picked the phone, his niece handed the phone to me and I put it on video and promptly told his wife what had happened, hoping that with her medical expertise she would tell me what to do.
It was all happening very quickly, me trying to calm her, her relaying what she believed was happening to him, and me telling my driver to get the car, so we could rush him to the nearest hospital which is five minutes from my home.
I was certain that if his case needed medical intervention that the hospital couldn’t provide, they would be able to rush him to a bigger facility since they had an ambulance.
I kept his wife on the phone, handing it to his niece, and the driver and I lifted him into my car. I jumped behind the steering wheel, my niece sat shot gun and the driver being stronger held my cousin at the backseat. We raced to the hospital getting there in record time.
I honked loudly, over and over again, and no one showed up. So, I told his niece to keep honking, while I ran to the entrance of the hospital. It was then that the guard sauntered to me and enquired what the matter was with disinterest. I told him I had an emergency and needed medical attention. He replied that I should wait there while he goes to get a nurse. I watched him go into the hospital and waited there for a while before he walked back out with a nurse. They took their time to get to me in the car, where my cousin sat unconscious.
The nurse lackadaisically checked his vitals, before announcing that he needed to go back into the hospital to get the doctor. I pleaded with him to allow us to bring him out, place him on a stretcher and wheel him into the hospital, so that they could attend to him quicker, but he refused and insisted on getting the doctor first.
I relayed everything to his wife, who was watching on the phone as the nurse once again practically strolled back to the hospital. It was a nervy wait until the doctor walked out to us in tandem with the nurse. I pleaded with him for a stretcher, and he ordered that one be brought. It was brought. My cousin was brought out from the car, laid on it and wheeled into the compound but not into the hospital itself.
That was where the doctor checked his vitals again, questioned me as to what had happened. I responded to his questions, telling him that from the moment I had been told of my cousin’s unresponsiveness by his niece, it had taken us less than ten minutes to get him to the gate of the hospital. I reiterated the long time it had taken for them to attend to him. He tried to do chest presses and massages but because of the time wasted since we saw him unresponsive, that was a labour in futility.
The doctor turned to me and without any empathy whatsoever, flatly blurted out, that my cousin was dead.
Dead!
It hit me like a brick to the chest.
The same person I had chatted with, laughed with, ate dinner with and watched television with a couple of hours again.
I couldn’t believe it neither could his niece because he was still breathing in the car as we waited for the hospital to attend to us.
His wife who was repeatedly asking what was happening over the phone, screamed loud with such deep pain when I told her what the doctor said, that my heart contracted so painfully with rising grief that I had to hand the phone over to his niece to get a grip of myself.
As his niece wailed over the phone with his wife, I knew I had to be strong.
I knew I had to disengage from my emotions and take charge.
So, I turned my attention to the doctor who had ordered that my cousin’s corpse be covered as it lay on the stretcher. When I asked that it be taken into the hospital, he refused, saying that they had no mortuary on the premises.
He then advised that I take it to Lagos Island or Lagos mainland to deposit it in any of the mortuaries there, reiterating that there were no mortuaries anywhere between the Ajah and Lekki 1 axis. I couldn’t believe it and said so to him and he repeated himself.
No mortuaries anywhere in that axis.
I asked that the corpse be transported with their ambulance to whatever mortuary that was closest by and he told me that the driver of the ambulance had traveled, so there was no one to drive the ambulance. I told them to keep the body while I drove to a Lagos state emergency point close to my house that is supposed to house an ambulance but of course, there was no ambulance there. That was when I remembered that I hadn’t seen an ambulance there for months now. The location of the ambulance that used to be stationed there is now a one-million-dollar question.
When I returned to the hospital, the Dr saw how distraught and devastated I was so he offered to give me a cover letter stating that my cousin was brought in alive but died at the hospital, reassuring me that with that I wouldn’t have issues getting the corpse accepted by any mortuary.
It was with that, that we left the hospital. The cover letter in hand and my cousin sitting up on the back seat, covered from head to toe by a white sheet.
I drove directly to the biggest hospital in Lekki Phase One. Since, I couldn’t believe that there were no mortuaries in the Ajah to Lekki axis. And right there, I was told that they had no mortuary. A big hospital like that built with no mortuary. It is unbelievable, yet true.
It was past midnight at the time.
We headed out down Admiralty Way to the Lekki Link Bridge, and right at the descent into Ikoyi, there was a check point manned by five armed policemen.
My heart cut.
What will they say when they see the body in the car?
I knew how the police could act when giving a reason to pounce on you and was deeply worried.
I stopped the car when I got to them in obeisance to the flashing of their flashlight. One of them walked over to me as I sat behind the wheel.
The police man looked at me, my cousin’s niece, my driver, and the corpse of my cousin as it sat behind completely covered from head to toe in white.
I held my breath expecting the question that was to follow.
“Madam, anything for your boys?”
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that after seeing the corpse of my cousin and my driver who was seated behind him, all this policeman could ask for was “egunje”.
Where is our security?
Wasn’t he concerned that the two women he saw in the car could be in danger? Didn’t he see that my driver could have a gun behind us and was holding us hostage? Didn’t he see there was a corpse in the car? Didn’t he see anything else but his hunger and his greed?
I told him I had no money in irritation. He smiled and waved us on. And like that we drove on, navigated the roundabout, and drove down Bourdillon road to another hospital in Ikoyi, in search of a mortuary.
When we got there, we were told that they had a mortuary, but there was only one space left, and they were holding it in case they lost a patient in their hospital. I was crestfallen. The mortuary attendant directed me to another hospital on Lagos Island.
We drove on.
All the big hospitals on Lagos Island told us the same story. It was either they had no mortuary, or the mortuary was full.
It was like that, we drove through Eko bridge, onto Ikorodu road to the mainland hospitals we had been directed too.
It was past 1 a.m. in the morning at this time. Driving through Lagos in the pitch of dark only depending on GPS as these areas were not known to me. Driving with the fear of running into “Oru” practitioners as they were supposed to be holding their processions as this was the night before the planned protests. Driving in the night with the fear of running into armed robbers or armed securities who shoot first and ask questions later. But drive I had to do as I needed to find a resting place for the corpse in my car.
We were all emotionally, and mentally wrought.
His wife who was still distraught was on and off the phone, as she also had to make calls to inform their extended family of his death, alongside his niece doing same.
And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, my cousin’s brother called and without mincing words told me that I couldn’t take the body to the mortuary without a relative. He forgot that his niece was a relative but I guess because she was a young woman she did not count in this patriarchal society we belong to. According to the culture of their tribe, a woman could not deposit the body of a man in a mortuary. I asked him what he wanted me to do with the body, being that no man in his family was with me and it will take at least seven more hours for any male member of his family to get to me because of the far distances they live at.
Then my cousin’s sister called. Her request was different. It was first a query – Why are you accepting that he is dead? Aren’t you a praying woman? Why would you take the verdict of a man over the verdict of God?
I was too emotionally weary at this time, and I asked her what she wanted me to do. She said she wanted me not to deposit his corpse at the morgue but instead pray over it, that she had heard a testimony of a man who was dead for three days and was prayed back to life. So, I asked her that if she had any prayers, she wants me to say, she should send it as a link, and I will play it to my cousins’ corpse.
She quickly sent me the links. Again, I asked her where she wanted me to keep the corpse for three days if it took it that long to resurrect. She said I should keep it with me. I asked her again. Keep it in my car? In my house? Or where? I can’t even recall what was her response, since I was totally fed up with everything by now.
So, I told his wife and niece what the issue was and three of us decided to go ahead and find a mortuary and deposit the corpse. Being in one mind that the cultural practice that only a male member of a family can deposit the corpse of a male member of the family was archaic, impractical and inherently wicked in spirit and in essence.
It brought to fore the traumatic time a close friend of mine had when she lost her husband to COVID and his male relatives insisted they had to see the body first and then will be responsible for putting it in the mortuary themselves. She sat with the body in the ambulance for over 8 hours until his brother arrived to do the needful. The brothers did not consider that the longer she sat with the body, the higher the probability of contacting the disease herself. No, culture and tradition had to prevail and not common sense. I wondered what must have been going through her mind in those hours.
It was with that decision and a clear conscience, knowing that his wife who was his next of kin, mother of his children and closest person, had given me permission that we finally arrived at a big government hospital on Lagos Mainland.
First, they didn’t want to open the gate because it was nearly 3 a.m. at the time, but when my driver spoke in the same language of the guards that they opened and allowed us drive in.
Interestingly the nurses on duty had asked if our emergency was a male or female. We answered that it was a male and they said they were only taking females as the male ward was full. We then explained that it was a corpse not a person. It was then that they allowed us to come in and started the procedure to accept it.
I found it very strange.
What if it was a male who had an emergency, would they have turned us away? Would they had rather the person died because they could not be flexible about bedding space in an emergency situation? What kind of medical administration was running the hospital that would stipulate which gender was treated which day in the emergency ward, since accidents do not select gender before they occur?
But I was grateful that finally a hospital was willing to accept the corpse of my cousin, especially when they informed me that if he had died before we got to the hospital and they had not given us a cover letter, we would have needed to get a police report stating the circumstances of his death. That alone was a headache I was happy that I didn’t need to go through, knowing that anything concerning the Nigerian police was mostly a horrid experience, since it leaves you vulnerable to be accused unjustly and fleeced at will.
I shudder to think how herculean and truly scary it would have been for me, if I was by myself, and my driver and his niece was not with me.
It would have been just me, with my cousin’s corpse traipsing the length and breadth of Lagos in the dead of the night, in search of a mortuary.
Hmmmm.
It took us nearly three hours from the time my cousin was pronounced dead until when we could find a mortuary for his corpse. It is a teachable experience. A sad commentary of the puerile state of our health sector, emergency services, work ethics and cultural beliefs.
We think we have created bubbles of luxury and sanity for ourselves because we live on the island, have good jobs or a fat bank account, yet the slightest misfortune that may befall us will leave us open to the same detritus of a dysfunctional society that is the plight of the people on the lowest rung of the ladder.
If my cousin was living in a functioning society, wouldn’t we have dialled an emergency number, get an ambulance to us in under five to ten minutes, get him immediate medical assistance as first respondents would have been able to attend to him onsite and during transit to a well-equipped medical facility with responsive staff who know the ethics of their profession. And even if he ended up dying it would not be because of lack of effort or the malfeasance of the system.
It is sad.
If my cousin had relocated and joined his family abroad as his wife had repeatedly pleaded for him to do, would he be laying cold in the mortuary of a near decrepit hospital on the mainland of Lagos?
I am still traumatised by what I experienced.
I am fearful about the next second in which I reside here.
I am humbled by all my vulnerabilities.
For I know now that there are no guarantees, no safeguards, nothing whatsoever to rely on, when an emergency happens to me, wherein my money, family or status cannot save me, because the country itself is not functioning in such a way in which it can save any of its citizens, both rich and poor alike.
May the soul of my dearest cousin journey swiftly through the light to that peaceful shore where worry, sorrow and pain are no more.
And since we all cannot japa, may we who still live, by choice or the lack thereof, in this country find within ourselves and without, the unflinching courage, deep resolve and boundless love for all, we need to do whatever it takes to fix our country. Because we know not to whom next, that emergency that helplessly and hopelessly propels us to the jaws of death, would happen to.
*The Author has chosen to be “Anonymous” in order to preserve the privacy of the family in a time of untold grief.
