The gunshot victims’ legislation

The House adopted the report on a bill for an Act to make Provisions for the Compulsory Treatment and Care of the Victims of Gunshots and Other matters Connected Therewith.The report on the legislation sponsored by the chairman of the House Committee on Aviation, Nkiruka Onyejeocha, was adopted after it was considered by the Committee […]

The House adopted the report on a bill for an Act to make Provisions for the Compulsory Treatment and Care of the Victims of Gunshots and Other matters Connected Therewith.
The report on the legislation sponsored by the chairman of the House Committee on Aviation, Nkiruka Onyejeocha, was adopted after it was considered by the Committee of the Whole.
The bill has 18 clauses covering various aspects of gunshot wounds and the circumstances they occur. If it becomes law, it will make mandatory for health institutions to accept and treat individuals with bullet wounds without recourse to a prior police report. However, the police must be notified of such cases within a specified timeframe.
Clauses 5 and 6 of the bill give the police power to immediately begin investigation into the circumstances surrounding the wounds upon the receipt of a report from a hospital; and must not take the victim away from the facility until the medical director certifies that the patient is fit for interrogation.
These provisions are backed by stipulated penalties for defaulters – six months’ imprisonment for doctors who fail to notify the police of such cases and N100,000 fine on erring hospitals; while anyone who wilfully withholds information from law enforcement gets five years in jail and a N50,000 fine.
The bill, which still has to go through some legislative processes in conjunction with the Senate before it is passed, is the latest effort to check the obnoxious practice of denying gunshot victims prompt care until they present a police report, leading to the avoidable deaths of thousands of innocent Nigerians over the years.
There have been series of reports and claims by persons who assist gunshot victims, medical practitioners and hospitals, especially private facilities, that they had endured harassments by law enforcement officers for treating gunshot victims without first obtaining police approval.
This practice is borne out of the prevalent, but erroneous, belief that majority of gunshot victims are armed robbers. The incidence of assassinations, kidnapping and armed robbery is now very high in the country and on most occasions, these criminals shoot innocent people indiscriminately to either get what they want or create an escape route.
While medical practitioners continue to shy away from attending to gunshot victims out of fear of harassment, such victims are usually left to die in their own pool of blood while waiting for a police report; this is nothing short of criminality.
Though back in 2009, the then Inspector General of Police, Ogbonna Onovo, urged medical practitioners to save victims of gunshots and accidents before reporting to police; and the Federal Road Safety Commission made a similar pronouncement in 2010, the harassment has continued because they were not backed by law.
There is no justification in insisting for police report before gunshot victims are treated even if they are well-known criminals. The practice in other climes is that intensive care is given to such people so that they can survive and help law enforcement agents in their investigations.
This is why the renewed effort by the National Assembly to introduce a law to give unrestricted access to treatment for victims of gunshots is timely.
Such efforts are not new though; similar moves in the past suffered a setback in 2009 after the lower chamber passed a bill – Compulsory and Emergency Treatment Bill – but the Senate was unable to pass its version of the document until the tenure of the Third Assembly ended in 2011.
With just about two months to the end of the Fourth Assembly, there are justifiable fears that the current initiative may suffer the same fate, taking the effort back to square one again, and thereby prolonging the agony of people with bullet wounds and their loved ones.