The management of the National Medical Services Laboratories in Pennsylvania, United States of America, has refuted the claim by the Lagos State Government that a toxicology test to ascertain the cause of the death of singer Ilerioluwa Aloba, aka Mohbad, was conducted at its facility.
The claim by the NMS Labs was in response to inquiries made by Punch correspondent, who embarked on a fact-finding mission to ascertain the musician’s cause of d**th.
Before embarking on the fact-finding mission, some concerned members of the public reportedly protested against the claim made by a pathologist, who appeared before the Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, May 15, and said an autopsy could not ascertain Mohbad’s cause of d**th because his corpse had decomposed.
PUNCH Metro had reported that the counsel for the state government, O. Akinde, told the Coroner’s Court sitting in the Ikorodu area of the state sometime in Nov 2023 that a toxicology test, which is an aspect of an autopsy seeking to determine the cause of Mohbad’s d**th, was conducted in the United States.
Buttressing this claim, the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, while responding to inquiries via a live telephone call with Ahmad Isah, the anchor of an Abuja-based online programme, Brekete Family, sometime in February 2024, said the toxicology test was being conducted at the NMS Labs in Pennsylvania, USA.
The result of the test reportedly arrived in Nigeria sometime in April 2024 and was passed on to a pathologist for interpretation.
Appearing before the coroner’s court, the pathologist disclosed that the autopsy could not ascertain the cause of Mohbad’s d**th because the corpse had decomposed.
Punch newspaper sent an Email to the hospital to find out if indeed the test was conducted in their hospital;
Responding to PUNCH on May 17, the Client Services Associate, Forensics Division, NMS Labs, Esther Dede, refuted the claim by the state government that Mohbad’s toxicology test was conducted at any of their laboratories.
“Unfortunately, we do not have a case for that patient,” Dede said.
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