Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Obadiah Mailafia, died of COVID-19 complications, the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH) has said.
The hospital also dismissed claims that Mailafia was treated shabbily at the facility before his death on Sunday morning.
The Middle Belt Forum (MBF), on Monday, alleged that the ex-CBN chief endured a miserable ordeal in the hands of doctors at the UniAbuja facility, saying officials at the hospital flatly refused to attend to him despite his severe condition.
Premium Times exclusively quoted the Chief Medical Director at UBTH, Bissallah Ekele, as saying that the forum’s allegations were baseless and false.
Dr Ekele said Mailafia had been attended to at two hospitals where he tested positive for COVID-19 before he was eventually transferred to the facility when his health had degenerated.
He said the ex- CBN chief eventually died of COVID-19 owing to underlying diseases.
He said: “I can confirm in my honor that all the allegations circulating in the media are false. We never asked for any deposit before commencement of treatment. The doctor on duty that day was on ground and received the patient and he was never at any point refused oxygen. In fact, he was placed on high-flow-oxygen to enable fast breathing.
“It was unfortunate that his health deteriorated rapidly despite all efforts to save his life,” he said.
Dr Usman Galadima, the doctor on duty during the incident, also refuted the allegation that the medical facility demanded a N600,000 deposit before attending to the former central banker.
“I was on duty between Saturday, September 18, and Sunday, 19. So when I resumed work in the morning, I was informed that we would be expecting a patient from CBN and I informed my staff – the nurses and a hygienist to prepare the VIP room and the general medical ward,” Galadima said.
“An ambulance from EHA clinics arrived in the afternoon. We adorned our PPE and rushed to meet the patient. He was already on the ambulance oxygen and from his oxygen consumption level, I noticed he was in a severe condition. We placed him on a highflow oxygen with no delay and wheeled him into the VIP section in a wheelchair.
“We are a tertiary referral centre for severe and moderate cases of such conditions. I discussed with the patient and the wife the kind of illness he has, the cause and treatment procedure before we started treatment. The wife informed us that the CBN is fully behind the patients’ management and that we should give him the best and that is exactly what we did.
“The patient got a bit uncomfortable later in the night so we attached an official to stay with him and monitor his vital signs because of the severity of his condition. We used about four cylinders of oxygen on him throughout the night. In the early hours of the following day, we noticed he was deteriorating in spite of all the treatment procedures. He could no longer sustain breathing and we had to start resuscitation. Sadly, we couldn’t save him.”
Dr Galadima said Malaifia was already certified dead before a foreign consultant was asked to intervene.
In 2019 general elections, Mr Mailafia contested as presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
He was also a senior official of the African Development Bank Group.
The deceased also served as Chief of Staff of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), the 79-nation multilateral development institution based in Brussels, Belgium.
