20 May 2020
Rt. Hon. (Chief) Orok Otu Duke (JP) has given insights into why he is pushing for the prosecution of Dr. Offiong Okoho the medical director of the defunct Covenant Clinic and Maternity which until it was closed down by the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, and sealed by the Cross River State Government, CRSG, was located at 22 Ekpo Eyo street off Uwanse street in Calabar South NEGROIDHAVEN has garnered.
According to Duke, beyond the unfortunate death of his immediate elder brother, Prince Otu Otu Duke, the SA to the State governor on Waste Management, due to the unprofessionalism of Dr. Okoho, he wants to forestall the death of another Nigerian resident in and indigenous to Cross River.
Duke made this known yesterday while addressing a cross section of the press at the official opening of the mourning house for the late Duke. He said that 'The idea is not for me to seek compensation directly from anybody that I suspect must have caused the death of my brother. The idea is to save the lives of others who are still alive and walking about.
'Because the few days I visited my brother in that hospital I saw nothing less than fourteen pregnant women, all struggling to deliver and I looked around that hospital, there was no delivery room. Even the operation carried out on my brother was a stretcher on top of a dinning table in a private room.
'So, it is trying to prevent the death of the other ones that I am fighting for. It has nothing to do… I don't need compensation from anybody. But, just as Dr Okoho, there are other doctors lurking around who are also perpetuating what Okoho did.
'My own anger is that from when we saw the dangerous sign as far back as that November 2015 when he was arrested and paraded by the Commissioner of Police over the sale of babies and imprisonment of pregnant women, if somebody had done something there, we would not have been where we are today and I am sure my brother would have been alive. So, I take it as a personal quest to try… the one I have seen, the one I can identify, to try to prevent him from killing any other Cross Riverian or resident of this town.'
Recall that NEGROIDHAVEN had reported about the shut down of Dr Okoho's Covenant Clinic & Maternity where it disclosed about the death of Prince Duke and the reasons why the state government and the NMA shut down the facility : https://www.negroidhaven.org/2020/04/why-state-government-shut-down-covenant.html?m=1
In an interaction with Dr. Okoho this morning, he denied that the deceased developed surgical sepsis as suggested by a report from Asi Ukpo Hospital in Calabar. According to him, the late Duke was stable when he left his facility as his vitals signs read normal.
Rt. Hon. Orok Duke who disclosed he was sad, observed that the situation is a double jeopardy for him as he has lost his brother and there seem to be no commensurate action to address the perceived infraction particularly by the Nigerian Police.
In a petition to the Commissioner of Police dated 6th May 2020, Duke noted that 'nobody is doing anything about the Dr Offiong Okoho, who has a history of professional misdemeanour and malpractice.' Duke therefore pleaded with the police chief to 'carry out a thorough investigation and to bring to book all culprits'.
