•Chimamanda Adichie
A Nigerian health professional has called on the Lagos State government to broaden the composition of the panel investigating the death of Chimamanda’s son by including pharmacists and nurses, warning that the absence of these cadres could undermine the credibility and outcome of the inquest.
In an open letter addressed to the state government, Pharmacist Adebola Lawal described the ongoing inquest as a welcome step toward justice and accountability but argued that its findings risk being “superficial, biased and ultimately ineffective” if it is dominated by only one professional group, reports Daily Independent.
Lawal, a licensed pharmacist, stressed that modern healthcare delivery is inherently multidisciplinary and cannot be properly examined through a doctor-only lens, particularly in a case where medication use, administration, monitoring and clinical decision-making may be central to determining what went wrong.
“Healthcare delivery is not a doctor-only enterprise,” the letter stated, adding that any inquiry that excludes other key professionals involved in patient care would fail to capture the full picture of events leading to the tragic death.
Making a case for the inclusion of pharmacists, Lawal noted that they are uniquely trained and licensed as end-to-end experts on medicines. Their expertise, he said, covers drug manufacturing and quality assurance, storage and distribution, prescribing appropriateness, dosing, drug interactions, administration safety, adverse drug reaction monitoring, pharmacovigilance and medication error analysis.
According to him, any investigation involving possible medication-related harm cannot be complete without pharmacists, warning that excluding them would amount to “investigating drugs without drug experts.”
The pharmacist also cautioned against what he described as the danger of self-regulation masquerading as accountability.
Panels dominated by a single professional group investigating its own members, he argued, create room for defensive conclusions and professional solidarity, a pattern he said has historically weakened accountability in Nigeria’s healthcare system.
Lawal further called for the inclusion of nurses on the panel, describing them as central to bedside care and indispensable to any meaningful reconstruction of clinical events.
Nurses, he said, play a key role in drug administration, patient monitoring, early detection of deterioration, escalation of care and documentation of clinical decisions.
“Their perspective is critical in understanding real-time decisions and identifying systemic failures that may not be apparent from a purely medical or physician-focused viewpoint,” he noted.
Beyond professional representation, the letter framed the inquest as a broader test of institutional integrity for Lagos State. Lawal argued that public confidence in the process would depend largely on its transparency, independence and inclusiveness.
“This inquest is not merely about one tragic death,” he wrote.
“It is about whether justice will be seen to be done, thoroughly and competently.”
He therefore urged the Lagos State government to immediately appoint licensed pharmacists and nurses as full members of the panel, ensure that its composition reflects the multidisciplinary nature of healthcare, and commit to a process that prioritises truth, patient safety and systemic reform over professional protectionism.
Anything short of this, he warned, risks reducing the inquest to a symbolic exercise with little meaningful outcome for the bereaved family or Nigeria’s healthcare system at large.
