‘How armed policemen watched dogs eat my son’s scalp’

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The father of a fouryear- old boy, who was attacked by dogs in Igando area of Lagos, Abraham Odia, has explained how he nearly lost his son to the animals. Odia said it was shameful that seven armed policemen invited to rescue the boy could not go near the dogs. This was even as the management of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) asked Odia to exercise patient, saying it would take a while for the little boy to fully recover from the severe injuries he sustained in the attack. For almost two hours, the four-year-old Isaac Omonigho Odia was on September 25 mauled by two wild dogs owned by his parents’ landlord, right in their living room.
The residents and policemen watched helplessly as the dogs devoured his scalp. Odia said the attack occurred around 5:15pm. He said: “The dogs emerged from the cage where they were supposed to be locked up, and took after the children. They scampered up stairs. The dogs already smelt blood and doubled the chase. “Two of the boys, while trying to escape, had to jump from the first floor. They landed with fractured legs. Isaac was trapped and the dogs ate him for one hour 15 minutes till it got to his skull. The alarmed neighbours called on the police at Igando Police Station. Seven came with guns; they couldn’t rescue the boy.

“It was when my wife saw the dogs coming back and forth from my sitting room, with blood in their mouth, that she told one of the police, ‘follow me up stairs; it is either you shoot the dogs or you scare them off.’ “What came out of the policemen’s mouth was that ‘are we the ones to go and die?’ It was then that she summoned courage – ready to be eaten along with her son – that she went inside. She chased the dogs and they ran away.”
Odia also claimed that his son had been abandoned by the staff of LASUTH, saying that the letter given to him to obtain the son’s treatment free of charge was not recognised by the hospital management. But reacting to the allegation of negligence, Professor of Plastic Surgery at LASUTH, Idowu Fadeyibi, said the boy’s case was very complicated. Fadebiyi said that it might take time for the injuries to heal.
He said: “The bones were exposed and he had bled extensively. We took him up and resuscitated him. Since then, we have been doing wound care. At every stage, we keep on explaining to the mother. This type of injury is not something we can just stitch together, but need to do different things and it would take months. Even if you want to take tissue transfer, you must be careful because this resulted from dog bites, which is actually very dangerous like human bite.”
 http://newtelegraphonline.com/how-armed-policemen-watched-dogs-eat-my-sons-scalp/