For Sha’awa Nasiru, a 20-year-old lady shot by her jealous boyfriend, it is trauma upon trauma as she battles for survival at the decrepit National Trauma Centre, Abuja.
The health centre is bereft of the functional equipment and consumables, making it impossible to give optimal services without seeking payment from patients. And this patient is poor, and none of her relations came forward to foot her medical bills.
DAILY NIGERIAN gathered that her travails began when her boyfriend, who is a serving policeman, exhausted all efforts to win Sha’awa’s heart to no avail.
Lurking in a dark corner at Gadar Mallam Mamman village along Abuja-Kaduna expressway on Wednesday night, the killer cop cocked his rifle.
She was barely seen as she emerged from a house in the red light district of the small but lively village.
To ensure that he did not miss his target, the policeman called her name. As she answered, he moved closer to her, shoved her off and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot echoed around the small village, and made people to scamper for safety.
She lay there in the pool of blood, gasping for breath until the villagers later located the scene of the crime and rushed her to a nearby hospital in Doka, Kaduna State.
The Doka hospital referred her to a higher hospital but all tertiary hospitals along the expressway rejected her, including Gwagwalada Teaching Hospital due to the Joint Health Sector Unions, JOHESU strike.
Given her condition, the doctors on duty at the National Trauma Center, Abuja admitted her, and soon commenced the resuscitation process, including placing chest tubes in both lungs as the bullet penetrated both chest walls.
Hospital sources said immediately after her admission at the trauma centre, the policemen who brought her to the hospital left and never returned to see how she was faring.
A friend of the victim, Salamatu Sani, said Sha’awa was able to recognise her attacker and identify him as “Inspector”.
The spokesman for Kaduna State Police Command, Mukhtar Aliyu, did not respond to DAILY NIGERIAN call. Mr Aliyu, an assistant superintendent of police, also did not reply a text message sent to him on Friday evening seeking police reaction to the incident.
