by medical practitioners and made to spend over 30 hours in a mortuary
in Makurdi, Benue State capital has thrown up a debate. Doctors,
according to a report, at a private hospital in the town had, on
Wednesday, August 26, 2015, certified Otene dead at 4.30 a.m. and
wheeled him into the mortuary, awaiting instructions from members of
the family for embalming. The report stated that, but for the visit by the
son of the 'deceased' to confirm the news, the Otene family would have
been preparing to inter the agriculturalist who retired from Benue State
civil service three years ago.
The old man had toothache and was rushed to the private clinic, on
Tuesday, August 25. A day later, he was certified dead and the doctors
whose names were not mentioned in the report could have immediately
ordered his embalming, but there was no family member to give the go-
ahead. So they wheeled him to the morgue. 30 hours thereafter, Eche
Otene, the son of the 'deceased', who lives in Lafia, Nasarawa State,
came visiting and the hospital was thrown into confusion when the
father raised his hand to acknowledge the presence of his son and
followed that gesture by sitting up on the mortuary trolley.
The question now is: Was the man sentenced to death by an
inexperienced medical team or he actually died but was brought back to
life by God? To the science-inclined minds, Pa Otene could not have died
in the first place and the question of resurrection was out of the
question. The only explanation, according to a Makurdi-based medical
practitioner, Dr. Ameh Edace, is that the retiree could only have been
"in a long coma".
The Medical Director of Rekiya Memorial Hospital, Kaduna, Dr. Bello
Mohammed, said that "in the history of medicine, there has not been any
case of anybody coming back to life after being certified dead." He
added: "If a person is pronounced clinically dead, he remains dead and
there is no way he can come back to life, certainly not after 24 hours. On
this case in question, the only medical explanation is that the patient was
in a long coma." To this school of thought therefore, if doctors had
certified Pa Otene dead, then the competence of such doctors should be
called to question. In other words, something must be amiss with the
death certification.
Benue State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN,
Archbishop Yimam Orkwar, however described the debate as
unnecessary, urging Nigerians and indeed the world at large not to
doubt the ability of God to heal or even bring back to life anybody
certified dead by man. According to him, this can only be a miracle of
God and not a medical error because it's not possible for a man
erroneously pronounced dead to survive 30 hours in the morgue. "It
must have been God, who had promised to do great miracles in our time,
who raised the man to life and at the time he did," the archbishop
submitted.
