A former employee of a Lagos hospital has come forward to challenge claims regarding the tragic death of a pregnant woman, Kemi, allegedly due to the hospital’s demand for a ₦500,000 deposit before treatment.
The former staff, Jimoh Abdulrahman Sadiq, accused the husband of whipping up undue sentiments against the hospital to exonerate himself from blame.
It would be recalled that a man, Akinbobola Folajinmi, lost his wife, Kemi, on February 18, 2025, due to pregnancy complications.
Folajinmi alleged in a series of video clips that he took Kemi to As-Salam Convalescent Centre, a medical facility along the Lagos’ Lekki-Epe Expressway, Ibeju-Lekki, but the hospital turned them away after he was unable to deposit N500,000.
In one of the videos, the man can be seen sitting closely beside his wife who rested her head on his chest. He makes a desperate effort to keep her conscious by talking to her, but she can only groan and grunt in response.
She appears weak and barely conscious.
In another video after the passing of his wife, Folajinmi posted another video showing the frontage of the hospital with a bold caption: “This hospital rejected my heavily pregnant wife for 500,000 deposit”.
The video clips generated a lot of reactions with many netizens criticising the hospital for prioritizing money over human life.
The owner of the hospital, Raufu Oyinlade, however, disputed the claims of the aggrieved husband. He said the woman was brought in at a point that she was already in a dangerous state.
Oyinlade said after a quick assessment of the wife while still in the wheelchair they brought her in with, the hospital referred her to Epe General Hospital where her case could be effectively managed.
Sadiq’s account corroborates this.
He also refuted the claim that the hospital demanded an upfront payment.
Sadiq said the pregnant woman was in critical condition upon arrival, exhibiting severe anaemia and a history of eclampsia-related convulsions.
He said the hospital recognized the complexity of her case and promptly referred her to the General Hospital in Epe for specialized care, without requesting any financial deposit.
According to Sadiq, the hospital prioritizes patient well-being over financial considerations.
He blamed the husband for not enrolling his wife in a hospital for antenatal care where they might have identified and managed the complications that ultimately took the life of the pregnant lady.
Read Sadiq’s post’s full post:
“Here is the truth about the incident. The man is just misleading the public just to shift the blame from himself.
The incident happened on the 18th of February when the wife was rushed to the said hospital and on getting there she was examined and she was severely pale (severe anemia in pregnancy), history revealed that she has convulsed twice due to Eclampsia and she will need both emergency blood transfusion and caesarean section simultaneously and the hospital said the condition is more that what they can handle and she was referred immediately to general hospital Epe without hesitation and wasting of time. We all know the process of blood transfusion in Lagos that you can only get blood from the accredited blood Bank and few accredited diagnostic centers in Lagos. This was the more reason she was referred immediately and he was never asked to make any deposit of 500k.
He can now come online and defaming innocent hospital but did not have common sense to registered his wife for ANC, even if he cannot afford private hospital, there are lots of primary health care that are cheap and affordable, they would have detected these two complications (severe anemia in pregnancy and Eclampsia) before hand.
This is the hospital I’ve worked with and I know well how they operate, the owner of the hospital is a God fearing man and he chooses life over money. I could still remember while I was working there we harbour three patients for over 3 months because they could not pay their bills even when we (the staff) were complaining, he always tells us to focus on service to humanity first.”
In a follow-up post, he wrote:
” I am reposting this not to blame the dead but to bring out the facts and health educate my people.
In my previous post, I listed some of the complications of pregnancy.
After making my findings, what led to the death of this pregnant woman was severe anemia in pregnancy and Eclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension). These two complications have made the pregnancy a high risk one. This is why it is very mandatory for every pregnant woman to register for Antenatal at maximum of 12 weeks of pregnancy or earlier if there is any previous completion or bad obstetrics history such as multiple miscarriage.”
