Mohbad: Autopsy on exhumed corpse may not reveal natural cause of death— Pathologist

Friday Omosola Interviews, Leading Stories 25/09/2023

A Pathologist from Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) Teaching Hospital, Ogun State, Professor Olatunjii Philip, has disclosed that carrying out an autopsy on a corpse after exhumation may not reveal the natural cause of death.

Professor Olatunjii in an exclusive interview with News Round The Clock, NRTC, said most of the internal organs of a corpse exhumed after some days will have become dead or destroyed.

“If you want to get causes or diseases from looking at the internal organs you can’t get it because all the cells are dead, you know, you can’t see anything, the cells are no more intact. The structure will have been destroyed because it’s just like an animal that has died, you will see that most of the organs will have been destroyed,” the professor said.

He maintained that the internal organs would not be useful for anything, saying that conducting an autopsy required samples of various important parts of the body.

Professor Olatunji, however, said if the person died of gunshots or stabbing, the autopsy would reveal the natural cause of the death because the mark would still be on the skin.

“Bones don’t get formless that way very early. If a fracture or something is happening to the bone or the bone has broken or the joints have, you can still see that. So, the structure, when you are looking at the structure of the body, the skin, you can still identify some things that might have happened to the body from the standpoint of the skin, the bone.

“Now, if the person is poisoned, if there is a toxin you can still get it because there are some chemicals that you can use.”

According to him, the cause of death can be either natural or unnatural such as old age among others.

READ ALSO

Autopsy, according to the National Library Of Medicine, means self study of a dead body which is carried out for clinical as well as medico-legal purposes.

Clinical autopsy, loosely termed pathological autopsy, is carried out to diagnose the disease that has caused the mortality when antemortem efforts have failed. Many times clinical autopsy is done despite the cause of death having been established ante mortem, to study the disease process in situ, thus enriching medical knowledge.

Medico-legal (ML) autopsy is performed to provide answers to questions about the identity, cause of death, time of death, circumstances of death, etc., thus helping law enforcement agencies to solve the crime.

On Thursday, September 21, the Nigeria Police Force and health officials took action to exhume the remains of the late singer, Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba known as Mohbad following circumstances surrounding his death and the call for justice.

The Lagos State Police Command after confirming the exhumation further said the autopsy had been completed.

The police disclosed that the nurse who reportedly injected the deceased singer before his demise had been arrested, but the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Lagos State Council said the arrested individual is not a registered nurse.

Mohbad died on September 12, 2023, and since then, accusing fingers have been pointed at his former boss and a popular singer, Naira Marley, and his crew.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with NRTC, the professor stated that getting the real cause of the death after burial is usually difficult owing to putrefaction (decaying of the body).

He explained that an autopsy days after burial will not show the cause of death in most natural deaths, but an autopsy after burial on someone who was shot is likely possible.

The National Library Of Medicine report added that although the procedure of both autopsies is the same, they differ from each other in many aspects.

“Usually the clinical autopsy is performed by the pathologist and ML autopsy by a forensic expert. However on occasions, especially in Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) setup, the pathologist may have to perform a ML autopsy. On the other hand, an autopsy started as an ML autopsy by a forensic expert may turn out to be a purely clinical autopsy, e.g. cases of sudden death.”