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By Joy Umukoro
Crime Victims Foundation of Nigeria (CRIVIFON), an NGO, has called on the state governments which are yet to domesticate the 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 had domesticated the new law.
However, at a press conference, CRIVIFON Executive Director Mrs Gloria Egbuji made a passionate plea to other states that are yet to domesticate it to do the needful.
Mrs Egbuji commended the Rivers and Lagos State governments for their recent domestication of the law, noting 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.
The group executive director, who is also a lawyer, pointed out that in spite of the law on the compulsory treatment of gunshot and accident victims without making the submission of police report a condition before treatment, some Nigerian hospitals have continued to demand police report thereby putting the lives of such victims at risk.
She maintained that in the last 18 months the country has lost some of its citizens through the careless refusal of the hospitals to accept the victims for treatment.
Mrs Egbuji gave an example of a final year Higher National Diploma (HND) student of the Ibadan Polytechnic in Oyo State, popularly known as Ebenezer Ayeni, who was shot on June 10, 2021, at his residence by armed robbers a 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 a private hospital where he was rejected by hospital staff who demanded a police report before they could treat his gunshot injury.
The human right activist said “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 doorstep 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.
