On the night of Friday, January 15, 2021, 22-year-old David Ntekim-Rex was making his way home from work when robbers accosted him in the Jibowu area of Yaba, Lagos, dispossessed him of his belongings, shot him and left the young Computer Engineer for dead.

Relatives and eyewitnesses say when Ntekim-Rex was taken to the hospital, he was denied emergency treatment because a police clearance had yet to arrive. 

A detachment of police officers who arrived at the scene of the robbery were more interested in the laptop the robbery victim had on him than in making sure he received urgent treatment from doctors.

In other words, Ntekim-Rex was profiled as a ‘yahoo yahoo boy’ or an internet fraudster by police personnel until he bled to death, reports say. 

According to one of the deceased’s relatives, Roy Mustang, “The police officers were drunk and kept being unreasonable. He was finally released to his family, and they got to LUTH (Lagos University Teaching Hospital) around 12:30am.

"David wasn't attended to by the doctors at LUTH. He was there till the family was convinced he couldn't be alive because he had no pulse. The doctors refused to administer any test to see if he was alive.

"The country failed David. The doctors failed David. The police failed David. The system failed David. Rest in peace David Ntekim-Rex.”

Yet the Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshots Act 2017, makes it a criminal offence for law enforcement and medical personnel to await a police clearance before a victim of gunshot injuries is given due emergency medical attention, as has been the norm for many years. 

The 2017 national assembly bill which was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari states that: “Every person, including security agents, shall render every possible assistance to any person with gunshot wounds and ensure that the person is taken to the nearest hospital for immediate treatment, with or without initial monetary deposit. 

“A person with a gunshot wound shall not be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment or torture by any person or authority including the police or other security agencies.”

The law specifies the following as punishment for police officers and doctors, among other provisions: “A person who commits an offence under this Act which leads to or causes substantial physical, mental, emotional and psychological damage to the victim, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not more than 15 years and not less than five years without the option of fine.

“Any person or authority including any police officer, other security agent or hospital who stands by and fails to perform his duty under this Act which results in the unnecessary death of any person with gunshot wounds, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N500,000, or imprisonment for a term of five years or both.”   

We hereby demand a full scale investigation into the death of Ntekim-Rex. Should the police and doctors be found to have been negligent and culpable in his death after trial, we demand that they be punished in accordance with the provisions of the 2017 Act. 

We also demand that the investigation and trial be made public and that witnesses be made to render their own version of events in the full glare of the public. 

We are after all a nation of laws and consequences.

Ntekim-Rex’s case should not be swept under the carpet and should serve as a deterrence to police officers and hospitals who see gunshot-wound victims as one more way of lining their pockets in a corrupt society. Otherwise, the young man would have died in vain. 

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*Pulse Editorial is the viewpoint of the editorial desk of Pulse. It does nor represent the views of the Organisation Pulse.