The family of the late singer, Ilerioluwa Aloba, known as Mohbad, has made public their intention to conduct an independent autopsy and toxicology test in order to ascertain the cause of his death.
Monisola Odumosu, who heads the family’s legal team, shared this information exclusively during a conversation with PUNCH Online on Thursday. The family plans to initiate this process by filing an application at the Lagos State High Court.
Meanwhile, Dr. Richard Somiari, the Director of Lagos State DNA and Forensic Centre, informed the Coroner’s court in Ikorodu on Wednesday that the results of the government-conducted autopsy on Mohbad would be available in the next three to four weeks.
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However, Odumosu expressed the family’s concerns regarding the pace and procedure of the government’s autopsy, deeming it too slow. Additionally, they were worried about the lack of representation by an expert from their side during the post-mortem examination.
He said, “We filed an application at the Coroner’s court on Wednesday to conduct our own autopsy and toxicology test, but the magistrate said he did not have the power to approve that and told us to approach the High Court.
“We are already preparing our document to go to the High Court so that we can ask for permission to organise our own autopsy and toxicology test. We have been planning this before now because we feel the government is too slow.
“They disclosed on a radio programme about three weeks ago that they were just about taking it to the US and that may take about 10 to 12 months and that is too long considering the fact that they had taken a sample from the body almost five months earlier.
“So why do we have to wait for so long a time? Then secondly, when the autopsy was being conducted, representatives of the family should be someone who is well informed on the issue of the autopsy; an expert that will confirm if it was properly done. But they just called anyone.”
Odumosu revealed that the family desired assurance that the samples taken from Mohbad’s body matched those sent for a toxicology test in the US. Hence, they plan to conduct a separate test in the United States to verify the results independently.
He said, “We are also planning to do it in the United States. Another reason why we took the decision was because for instance, if they poison someone, at a point in time, it will evaporate that no test can discover it. So we don’t want to wait till when that has happened before we think of doing our test and discover that nothing was found.”