To say almost every family in Nigeria has experienced negligence in the hands of medical professionals, in one way or the other, that has resulted in unnecessary loss of lives or permanent injuries would never be an exaggeration or an overstatement.
Sadly, no healthcare practitioner in the history of Nigeria has ever been criminally convicted for deviating from professional standards to cause injury or death to a patient through negligent act or omission.
That is until now.
When Somtochukwu awoke from sedative, he felt excruciating pain and tightness in his leg. His mother called Dr. Orji – who had already left the hospital before she could bring the result of the X-ray to him – and complained about the pain but the doctor asked her to ignore it, adding it would wear off in a couple of days.
Trusting the doctor, the helpless mother took her son home.
That night, the constant, excruciating pain could not allow the child sleep a wink or eat or do anything else other than cry for help. And so, first thing the following morning – July 27 – he and his mother returned to the hospital.
At the hospital, Somtochukwu’s mother begged Dr. Orji to remove the cast and save her child from the unbearable pain, but the doctor ignored her plea and left the cast on, only cutting out a square hole at the back of the boy’s knee before sending them home.
On getting home, the woman observed that fluid was oozing out from the opened hole, necessitating her taking her son back to the hospital the following day: 28 July, 2018. This time, Dr. Orji admitted the patient and removed part of the cast, the leg remaining swollen with no sign of improvement.
Somtochukwu’s father was desperate to save his child. So, he contacted two orthopaedic surgeons, seeking their professional opinions. It turned out that his child had developed compartment syndrome caused by occlusion of blood supply (resulting from the tight fiberglass cast) to the limb for more than 48 hours.
This culminated in the boy being immediately moved to Reddington Hospital in Lagos where six surgical interventions were performed on him before he could be flown back to the United States for further medical intervention.
Although the American doctors saved Somtochukwu’s limb, he developed foot drop: difficulty lifting the front part of the foot.
All the trauma Dr. Orji subjected Somtochukwu and his family to would have been needless and totally avoided had he listened to the boy’s mom’s plea and removed the cast the day after it was fixed, allowing the boy to heal naturally.
Anguished by what she and her family experienced in the hands of Dr. Orji, Somtochukwu’s mom made a complaint against Dr. Orji to the police. The police conducted an investigation and submitted their findings to the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution (DPP). The DPP, in turn, filed charges against Dr. Orji in the Lagos High Court.
The woman also filed a complaint with the Medical and Dental Practitioners Investigation Panel (Dr. Orji’s peers) against Dr. Orji in March 2019.
The Panel also carried out its own detailed and exhaustive investigation, grilling four doctors at Dr. Orji’s Excel C. Medical Center as well as five doctors at Reddington Hospital – including Dr. Ike Nwachukwu who performed six surgeries on Somtochukwu to stabilize him before he was flown out of Nigeria.
The Medical and Dental Practitioners Investigation Panel (Dr. Orji’s peers), in the course of investigating the matter, listened to the complainant and the respondents plus diligently and carefully went through documentary evidence which included the patient’s note before determining that:
i. Dr. Orji is a general and pediatric surgeon and not an orthopedic surgeon and, as such, should have referred Somtochukwu to an orthopedist whose area of specialization it is to treat fractures of the bone.
ii. It was wrong for Dr. Orji to apply fiberglass cast on Somtochukwu at his medical centre before sending him for X-ray elsewhere.
iii. Dr. Orji did not seek or obtain appropriate consent before applying fiberglass cast on Somtochukwu.
iv. Dr. Orji refused to remove the synthetic cast even after the child’s family requested him to do so when it was glaringly obvious their child was suffering as a result of it.
v. The patient (Somtochukwu) was discharged from Dr. Orji’s Excel C. Medical Center in a worse condition before his family took him elsewhere for treatment.
In the light of the above determination, the panel referred Dr. Orji to the Disciplinary Tribunal.
And the Disciplinary Tribunal proffered a-five-count charge against Dr. Ferdinand Ejike Orji:
a. Gross negligence leading to compartment syndrome and foot drop
b. Manifestation of incompetence in the assessment of the patient
c. Failure to correctly diagnose his (Somtochukwu’s) condition
d. Failure to obtain appropriate informed consent before carrying out a surgical procedure on the patient
e. Causing detriment to the patient by failing to refer him to an orthopedic surgeon when it was necessary to do so
When Dr. Ejike Orji knew he had nothing to say in his defense regarding some of the accusations leveled against him, he attempted to use different gimmicks to evade justice.
The tactics he adopted include:
Three times stalling the Disciplinary Tribunal’s trial in 2021 on the pretext of ill-health.
Filing an enforcement of fundamental rights against the tribunal at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.
This prompted the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution to step in and arraign him with one count of causing grievous bodily harm to Somtochukwu Ezi-Ashi; two counts of endangering human life through reckless and negligent acts; and three counts of breach of duty of person doing dangerous acts and endangering human life through reckless and dangerous acts.
These charges violated sections 245, 251(1)(e), 209, 211 and 251(1)(e) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State.
Dr. Orji was subsequently convicted on four of the six counts and sentenced to one year in prison for each count.
But the biggest cruelty in all of this is not that Dr. Orji emerged from prison on bail after spending only three months in incarceration, rather it is the fact that the doctor videoed himself dancing out of prison and somehow managed to find the victim’s father’s phone number with which he sent him the video, mocking and further traumatizing him and members of his family.
