•Mrs Eunice Bright Ekwok
When she was told sometime in April 2021, during her ante-natal registration at Divine Rain Maternity Clinic, that she was carrying a twin pregnancy, 32-year old Mrs Eunice Bright Ekwok’s joy knew no bounds.
For, she only paused momentarily to contemplate how she would be able to cope in raising the expectant babies with her husband, Bartholomew Bright Ekwok, who had no stable income job, reports Saturday Vanguard.
Since she has been told her fate, Mrs Ekwok demanded for a copy of the scan result to take home but the doctor, Timothy Zeje blatantly turned it down, he told her the rule in the hospital forbids that, insisted that the result can only be put in her file in the hospital.
She got home and disclosed what she had been told in the hospital by the doctor to her husband. At first, the husband wanted evidence for what he had just heard and so, he asked the wife to present the scan result. When she could not present it and instead told her husband the rule of the hospital, the 34-year old wanted to rush to the private medical facility to meet the doctor for an explanation. But his wife’s insistence that it wasn’t necessary to pursue the scan result made him suspend his action.
They later prayed about the doctor’s disclosure and resigned to fate. With this, Mrs Ekwok started preparing herself towards the day she would give birth.
Each time she went for a follow-up check at the hospital, located at Sauka area of Abuja, the expectant twin mother would engage the medical doctor of how she was happy for the news he broke to her earlier about the status of her pregnancy. She had no inclination that she would unknowingly share her twins with the doctor who had been married for years without a child in the union. Ahead of hospital plans, he told Mrs Ekwok that his wife was pregnant and she could have conceived almost the same time with her.
When the pregnancy was due, Mrs Ekwok gave birth in the hospital through a cesarean section, though in an unconscious state. Neither the husband nor any of her relatives was in the labour room during the session, it was only the doctor and the hospital’s nurses.
The middle age woman, narrating the heart-rending experience, said some hours after she regained consciousness, she was only handed one baby instead of two since she was carrying a twin pregnancy. When she requested to see her other child, she was informed by the doctor that the other twin didn’t survive birth.
“I told the doctor that I would like just to see how the dead child looked like or his bones but he refused. “They told me that my baby is dead and scattered. Okay, where are the pieces and where are the bones? I asked but they couldn’t give me an explanation. Instead, they were saying why would I not be grateful for the one that survived birth and rather be asking for another baby when we were a poor couple and could barely take care of the one we have. We let go the issue at the time,” she said, sobbing.
When Mrs Ekwok went back to the hospital for a check on the wound that arose from the cesarean section, she requested to see her file but she was told her file had since been burnt even as she was seeing a heap of patients’ files in one of the offices.
“When I told them I wanted to see where it was burnt and the ashes since they claimed it was just few days they did it, they asked me to go behind the building and when I got there, there was nothing suggesting that they had burnt anything. I returned to ask them why should it be only my file they would burn out of the many others in the hospital? They couldn’t say anything.”
As God would intervene for the couple to see one of their alleged lost twin sons, on one faithful day she had gone to a nearby general hospital for a routine immunization, Mrs Ekwok met her alleged son in someone’s care.
She explained that as she made to return home after being attended to, she saw the wife of the medical doctor of the hospital she gave birth coming into the facility for immunization. When she approached her for greeting, Mrs Ekwok saw that the baby the doctor’s brought was a spitting semblance of her own baby – same dreadlock and everything! She couldn’t identify between her child and the one the doctor’s wife brought in for immunization except how they were dressed.
Shocked, Mrs Ekwok, paused and reflected. She remembered that she had delivered of her child in a hospital owned by the woman’s husband. She also did not forget that she had twin pregnancy but saw only one baby after delivery. Although she was told the other child ‘scattered ‘ during birth. She became curious to know more about the child in the hand of the doctor’s wife.
“That faithful day, I went for immunization at AMAC Hospital at Besan. After they gave my baby the injection, I wanted to go home, so I was trying to put my baby on my back and immediately saw the wife of the doctor where I gave birth coming into the hospital with one of her brothers. They were bringing their children for immunization. When I saw the baby they brought, I was like, what is happening here?
“The baby in my hand looked exactly like the one in their hand. I said ‘I’m so confused.’ I didn’t even know what to do again, so I greeted them and she sat down. And since it was a heat period, I asked her to remove the baby’s cap because the heat was too much. She removed the cap, I became confused the more because of the spitting semblance of the child and my baby. They have same leg, same face, same dada (dreadlock), same everything. I said ‘what is going on here’ to myself. I now concluded that my earlier intuition that my twin baby was taken away at birth and not dead as told by the doctor,”she narrated.
But instead of raising alarm alerting people at the immunization facility to her claims that she had found her missing child, Mrs Ekwok took to a Plan B option. She would find out the home of the couple in possession of her ‘twin baby’ and become a regular visitor there.
How would she do it perfectly? She confided in her husband and they hatched a plan. Following this, she went to the doctor’s home with two of her wrappers (clothes), pretending that things had not been fine with them financially and begged that they buy the material from her as their way of assisting her family. Mrs Ekwok became a regular visitor to the doctor’s house unknown to her host that her guest was on a mission to uncover the truth about their supposed baby.
But this was when peace began to elude the doorstep of the Ekwoks, because in several attempts to find out more about the child’s origin, she and her husband have been taken to police stations and detained, taken to court and sent to prison and even openly tortured and accused of attempting to steal a child.
In all the places they have been taken to, they continued to lay claim to the parenthood of the child, insisting on conduct of a DNA to prove their case but the police allegedly, through the influence of the doctor and his wife, have blatantly turned down their request and instead, been trying to prosecute them in court for theft.
“Insisting that the child who is over two years now is theirs, the couple called on the authorities and the public to intervene so their request for a DNA can be conducted for the child in contention.
Contacted to speak on allegation by Mrs Ekwok, the accused, the doctor refused, explaining that his action was because the case was already being handled by the police, adding that it had been taken to court.
He however directed our correspondent to the Force Intelligence Department Abuja for more details.
“The case is already being handled by the police and it has been taken to court. If you have to investigate more about the matter, the best place to go is the Force CID,” he said.
The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, an umbrella body of practicing medical practitioners, said even as the allegation was raised over a year ago, it had not been formally brought to its attention.
Spokesperson of the Abuja branch of NMA, Dr Bature Mannir, told our correspondent that he had just heard about it, asking for time to confirm from the chairman if such a complaint had been brought to his table. But at the time of filing this report, he was yet to respond.
Think Cross River calls for justice, vows no son of the state will be hijacked by anybody
Reacting to the development, Think Cross River, an initiative that aims to foster unity, responsibility and collective ownership among Cross Riverians, has called for justice to prevail.
The group vowed to pursue the case to its logical end, ensuring that the child was reclaimed by his alleged biological parents.
The initiator of Think Cross River, Papa Dom Cklamz Enamhe, told our correspondent that no child of the state’s origin would be allowed to be taken away by anybody under any guise.
Enamhe, who is also the convener of Who is Who platform of Northern Cross River, said: “Mr. Bartholomew Bright-Ekwok is from Cross River State. We just got to know about the story and we have moved in.”
The elder statesman said: “We will not allow any child of Cross River extraction go out. We will not stand and watch anybody intimidate any Cross Riverian. I have briefed the governor and he is on his foot on this. The senators from Cross River State extraction are all on the same case.
“No one child of Cross River extraction will be taken anywhere. We will get back the child. We will have DNA. We will go to court. We will do the right things. We, as a community, have resolved that this matter will be sorted out properly.
“Our child will return to the immediate family and will be back home. Poverty is not a crime. No Nigerian has a right to intimidate anybody because he is richer or because by any means, he is a professional.
“If I come to your hospital to give birth, I didn’t commit a crime. If you say one of the twins was missing or dead, where are the features? And we are taking two years and 11 months and you are still ignoring just a DNA test? We will afford it. We can afford it. We will go through the processes.”
