Death on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue
By Femi Olugbile
On Tuesday the 4th of March, at a little past 10pm, a young Nigerian man rode his power bike on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, in the heart of Lagos, on his way home. As was his custom, he had stopped after work to exercise at iFitness Gym on Victoria Island.
The young Nigerian was Adetunji Opaleye, thirty-three years old. He was born in Lagos, and brilliant and full of verve. His friends called him ‘Teejay’. In many ways he typified the energy and enterprise of the Nigerian Nerds who were making Lagos a hub for bold internet startups and innovative solutions, attracting attention across the world. The fevered life of Lagos with its unique mix of brains and restless energy had already produced internationally famous unicorns and spawned billions of dollars in commerce. Just beneath the layer of superstar outliers like Interswitch, Flutterwave and Moniepoint were a growing number of brands that found their niche in the local market space, delivering high-end service by matching innovation to need, and becoming vital parts of the infrastructure for a burgeoning service industry. Often there was good money to feed a snazzy lifestyle of expensive gadgets, posh apartments in Lekki and a ‘work hard, play hard, open-all-hours’ life.
One of such brand names is BUMPA. The company provides computerised solutions for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and describes its product as ‘the best management app for SMEs in Africa’. In 2022, BUMPA secured $4 million in seed funding. It has not looked back since, facilitating 160 billion naira in transactions for 60,000 SMEs.
Adetunji Opaleye – Teejay – attended Lagos State Model College, Meiran and studied Law at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. But Law was not his passion. Technology was. He switched careers and became a software engineer. He worked for some firms, and spent a little time with the financial services company E-Settlement.
He founded a web hosting firm which he named HostCabal.
Then, with his friend, Kelvin Umechukwu, he co-founded the startup BUMPA, taking the office of Chief Technical Officer.
The traffic was relatively light on this March night.
As Teejay came up to the traffic lights after1004 Estate, an SUV emerged suddenly onto Ozumba Avenue from his left. There was a loud crash.
Teejay was sent sprawling onto the tarmac.
He was injured, but still alive.
The focus of this sad story is not about how the accident happened, or the behaviour of the principals. Emotions are high; there is a petition circulating, and there is a case in court.
Accidents happen. The tragedy in the story is really what happened from the moment of the accident, and how Nigeria failed Teejay.
You had missed the story earlier and only became aware of it a few days ago from a posting on a WhatsApp group you favoured. The posting was by Noimot, a Medical Communicator.
‘Society failed this young man. BUMPA could have afforded to get an air ambulance to fly him abroad, if there was space and time. What’s wrong with us?’
‘We operate in silos’ chimed in Orode, an outspoken Paediatrician, incensed by the waste of life. ‘Think of how many five-star hospitals are within a five-mile radius of that spot.’
Even Akin, former LUTH CMD, professor of Public Health, agreed there was a system disconnect.
Your recent book on Frontline Healthcare Facilities in Nigeria confirmed that, with its proximity to many frontline hospitals such as Reddington, St Nicholas and Evercare, Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue was probably the ‘safest’ place in the country to have an accident, if you had to have one. On paper.
Back to Teejay lying on the road on Ozumba, on this night in March.
A crowd of passers-by and area boys gathered around the prostrate man. Seeing he was alive, they decided quickly to convey him to hospital. A sympathetic Uber driver offered assistance. A few in the crowd squeezed into the car with the victim.
According to the narrative, the first hospital they reached said they could not admit him. Undaunted, they headed to another hospital, which also demurred.
Teejay was eventually transhipped into a ‘Korogbe’, one of the ramshackle minibuses that blight the traffic on the Lekki-Epe axis.
In this fashion, he was eventually admitted to a willing hospital.
The discontinuities stick out a mile.
Any of the ‘good Samaritan’ area boys could have dialled 767 or 112, the Lagos Emergency numbers, from their mobile phones, IF they knew.
There were a whole armada of ambulances within 10 minutes’ drive of Ozumba Mbadiwe. But they were ‘private’, not ‘public’. Snug in their silos, they were not part of any emergency response system.
It sounds abhorrent that a hospital would turn away a dying man. But not every hospital is equipped to intervene in life-threatening emergencies. And Critical care and Life Support are excruciatingly expensive, with costs that could run into millions of naira in twenty-four hours. Recognising this, the Nigerian National Health Act of 2014 statutorily allocates a percentage of a fund known as Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) for the reimbursement of hospitals that treat anonymous victims of road traffic accidents and other life-threatening emergencies, as a quid pro quo to making such treatment compulsory. To the best of this writer’s knowledge, no hospital in the nation has been reimbursed to date for costs accumulated in the treatment of such an emergency.
Perhaps the brilliant Lagos boy would have survived, and perhaps not. But at least he could have had a fighting chance, if his country’s considerable health resources were not in disconnected silos.
To conclude the story, Teejay’s brother arrived, distraught, at the accident scene and was shepherded to the hospital.
Teejay was dead.
BUMPA has announced it will create an AI Assistant named ‘Teejay’ to help customers to navigate their online transactions, as Teejay was so fond of doing in real life.
May the soul of Adetunji Opaleye rest in perfect peace, and may God comfort his grieving family and friends.
