Psychiatric patients at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital Abeokuta, Ogun state, protested poor treatment from the federal government facility near Aro in the state capital.
The surprise protest lasted over two hours before police intervention.
Amidst the chaos, a psychiatric doctor and three nurses narrowly escaped harm.
Patients complained about inadequate feeding, sanitation, and lack of backup power during outages. Some patients’ relatives noted ongoing issues, prompting the protest despite management inaction.
One relative, requesting anonymity, revealed patients pay between N500,000 to N700,000 depending on their stay duration.
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the institution, Ajibola stated the problem was “just an internal affair”, which has been redressed and is not worth being publicized as news.
Speaking on the situation, the Lafenwa Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Enatufe Omoh, said just one of the mental physicians was attacked, as he got varied degrees of tooth bites from the protesting on-admission patients.
The divisional Police Officer stated further that the protesters had disagreements with their handlers at the health facility having been denied some privileges, which included seeing their relations who would take them home after being discharged from the hospital, as well as not being allowed to freely move around.
He, however, denied the death of anybody within the period when the protest lasted. (Channels TV)