Security expert faults panel’s report on Kano deaths

THE President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria (AISSON), Dr. Ona Ekhomu, has faulted the claim by the Presidential panel on the mysterious deaths in Kano State that Covid-19 was responsible for the deaths.

He said that the panel erred in its conclusion because the methods it used in determining the cause of the deaths (COD) did not conform to the methodology for forensic pathology.

Reacting to the preliminary report of the Dr. Nasiru Sani Gwarzo-led presidential panel in a press release he issued yesterday, Ekhomu said that the panel should have conducted conventional autopsies on the bodies to determine the cause of the deaths.

He said the “the so-called verbal autopsies are unscientific, have no validity, have no reliability and certainly are not reproducible.”

Ekhomu said that relying on the age of victims amounted to mere profiling and a class characteristic which he said would not explain the individual deaths. According to him, the panel’s report blaming the deaths on COVID-19 is “fatally flawed, did not reach the threshold of forensic pathology, and should not have made such a weighty conclusion.”

He urged the panel to suspend its final report while a crack team of forensic pathologists should be deployed to conduct normal forensic examination on the deceased persons.

“Their internal organs should be examined. Toxicology tests should also be conducted for toxins along with other death investigation protocols,” he said.

He said that the scientific method of forensic pathology ought not have been altered simply because the deaths occurred in Kano.

”With my forensic science knowledge, I can guess that there is an epidemic (not COVID-19) ravaging communities in Kano.

“It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to send medical detectives to Kano, accompanied by crack police detectives to unravel the mystery,” he said.

According to Ekhomu, the possible causes of the mysterious deaths in Kano include Lassa fever, tuberculosis, kidney malfunction epidemic, ebola fever, adulterated hard drugs and some unknown pathogens, among others.

He said: “The deaths could have originated from a breach in the food supply chain, or even malevolent tampering with medicines.

“The proper thing to do is to conduct medical examination of the human remains to determine the exact cause of death (COD) while the police detectives figure out if the deaths were from natural causes or from foul play.”

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