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By Joy Umukoro
A non governmental organisation (NGO), Crime Victims Foundation of Nigeria (CRIVIFON), has called on the state governments which are yet to domesticate Treatment of Gunshot Victims Act 2018, to do so, immediately, to mitigate the adverse effect of criminality on innocent Nigerians.
Out of 36 states, only two states; Lagos and Rivers, have domesticated the new law.
Executive Director, CRIVIFON, Mrs. Gloria Egbuji, at a press conference, made a passionate plea to other states that were yet to domesticate the law to do the needful. She commended Rivers and Lagos states’ governments for their recent domestication of the law and noted that if the other states toe the same path, the move would greatly reduce encumbrances in the treatment of gunshot and accident victims, by both public and private hospitals.
Mrs. Egbuji, who is also a lawyer, pointed out that in spite of the law on the compulsory treatment of gunshot and accident victims without demanding a police report, some Nigerian hospitals have continued to demand police reports before treatment, thereby, putting the lives of such victims at risk.
She maintained that in the last 18 months, the country has lost some of her citizens through the careless refusal of hospitals to accept the victims for treatment. She gave an example of a final year Higher National Diploma (HND) student of the Ibadan Polytechnic, Oyo State, popularly known as Ebenezer Ayeni, who was shot on June 10, 2021, at his residence, by armed robbers few days to his wedding.
She claimed that the student, who was also a gospel music producer, was rushed to the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, and later to a private hospital, where he was rejected by the hospital staff who demanded a police report before they could treat his gunshot injury and he died hours later in a pool of his own blood.
“Even though the Gunshot and Accident Law is undergoing the process of amendment, it is already an extant law, the provisions of which must be obeyed by the police, hospitals and other medical facilities as enshrined.
“Therefore, we wish to strongly appeal to the media to assist in taking the message to the door step of Nigerians, that it is now a national offence for any hospital or medical facility to deny any gunshot or accident victim the right to be treated before being subjected to the submission of a police report.
“At the same time, officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force should know that it is also an offence on their own part to arrest or harass any medical staff for treating a gunshot or accident victim, who does not have any police report at the time of admission,” Mrs. Egbuji insisted.
