There is something deeply unsettling about the latest development in the death of Mary Habila.
On 23 August, I wrote on this platform about the danger of treating the law as an optional accessory in suspicious deaths. I asked a simple question: when a Nigerian dies suddenly and in circumstances requiring investigation, who decides how that death occurred? The family, or the law?
Two days later, Premium Times reported that Mary Habila’s family had finally “revealed” the cause of her death.
According to the family’s tribute in her burial brochure, Mary had previously been diagnosed with a hole in her heart and had suffered heart-related problems. The family said her condition became critical and that she “sadly passed away following a cardiac arrest.” Premium Times also reported that the family did not explain how it reached that conclusion.
And therein lies the problem.
A family tribute is not a post-mortem examination.
It may tell us what the family believes. It may tell us what they were told by a doctor. It may tell us what they sincerely understand to have happened.
But it does not, by itself, establish the legal or forensic cause of death.
The DPP had already asked the question
This is what makes the latest development so extraordinary.
The Ebonyi State Director of Public Prosecutions had already considered the circumstances surrounding Mary’s death and advised that the cause needed to be established through a post-mortem examination.
The DPP’s legal advice reportedly described the matter as involving the “sudden and unnatural death” of Mary Habila. It noted that there was no evidence that she had been sick or medically unstable before her sudden death and that establishing the immediate and remote causes of death was essential to the investigation.
The question posed by the DPP was therefore entirely reasonable:
What exactly caused her sudden death?
That is not a question to be answered by sentiment, family tradition, political statement or public relations.
It is a medical and forensic question.
And once the state has opened an investigation into a sudden or potentially unnatural death, it becomes a matter of public interest, not simply a private family affair.
Now the family has supplied the answer
Yet after the dispute over the autopsy, the subsequent withdrawal of the family’s support for the examination and Mary’s eventual burial, we are now presented with a family explanation.
Cardiac arrest.
But cardiac arrest is not necessarily the underlying cause of death. Every death ultimately involves the cessation of the heart’s function. The important forensic question is why the heart stopped.
Was it an underlying cardiac condition?
Was it an arrhythmia?
Was it trauma?
Was it poisoning?
Was it another medical event?
Was it an accident?
Was it something else?
That is precisely why forensic medicine exists.
Indeed, Nigerian medico-legal research has long recognised sudden unexpected natural deaths as an important category for coroner investigation and autopsy. Studies from Benin City and Ibadan demonstrate that sudden natural deaths, accidental deaths and homicidal deaths have historically formed significant parts of coronial autopsy practice in Nigeria.
The point is not that Mary was murdered.
The point is that nobody should decide that she was not murdered merely because her family has now said she died from cardiac arrest.
Those are two completely different propositions.
The dangerous substitution of belief for evidence
This is where Nigeria’s peculiar relationship with the rule of law becomes troubling.
We seem increasingly comfortable with a system in which the law starts the journey, but somebody’s personal preference decides where the journey ends.
The police investigate.
The DPP gives legal advice.
Questions arise.
An autopsy is considered necessary.
Then the family objects.
The body is eventually buried.
And after burial, a family statement supplies a cause of death.
At what point did the family become the coroner?
At what point did a funeral brochure acquire the evidential authority of a forensic report?
And, more importantly, what happens to the investigation when the principal physical evidence has disappeared into the ground?
These are not rhetorical questions.
They go to the heart of the rule of law.
My earlier article argued that Nigeria has inherited laws dealing with sudden and unnatural deaths but has developed an institutional culture in which those laws are often applied selectively. The tragedy is that the problem is not always that Nigeria has no law.
Sometimes the problem is that Nigeria has law, but somebody more powerful, more connected or simply more determined decides when it should be used.
The family has rights. But the State has duties.
Let us be fair to the Habila family.
They lost a daughter.
They wanted her body returned.
They wanted to bury her.
They opposed an autopsy, reportedly for personal and cultural reasons.
Those wishes deserve respect.
But the grief of a family cannot automatically extinguish the public interest in determining the circumstances of a potentially suspicious death.
A criminal investigation is not a private lawsuit.
If I am suing you, I may decide not to continue my case.
But if the State believes a crime may have been committed, the State cannot simply say: The deceased’s father has withdrawn his complaint, so everybody can go home.
That would make criminal justice negotiable.
It would also create a dangerous precedent.
Imagine a suspicious death involving an influential person. The family is persuaded to oppose an autopsy. The body is buried. A family statement then announces that the deceased had a medical condition and died naturally.
Case closed.
What happens to the independent investigation?
What happens to the evidence?
What happens to the possibility of discovering that the family was mistaken?
And what happens where a family member has been pressured, persuaded or simply does not know the whole story?
The law exists precisely because human beings do not always know everything.
The tragedy of “cardiac arrest”
There is also a medical irony in the phrase.
“Cardiac arrest” sounds wonderfully definitive.
It isn’t.
It is rather like saying that a car stopped because the engine stopped.
That is a description of the event, not necessarily an explanation of what caused it.
A forensic investigation seeks to establish the underlying cause and, where necessary, the manner of death.
This is why the DPP’s position was important. The legal advice did not say that Mary had been murdered. It said, in effect, that the circumstances were sufficiently unclear to require proper investigation.
That distinction matters enormously.
Calling for an autopsy is not accusing somebody of murder.
It is refusing to guess.
The Minister’s position makes independent investigation even more important
Senator David Umahi has denied wrongdoing and, according to Premium Times, supported the call for an autopsy to establish the actual cause of death.
That position should be acknowledged.
Indeed, if an autopsy had been conducted and had established a natural cardiac death, it would potentially have removed much of the speculation surrounding the case.
That is precisely what independent evidence is supposed to do.
It protects the innocent as much as it exposes the guilty.
An investigation is therefore not necessarily an instrument against the Minister. It is an instrument for the truth.
That is why the State should not outsource the determination of truth to either the accused, the family, the media or social media.
And then came the burial
Mary was buried in Nok, Kaduna State, on 21 August.
There have been conflicting reports about whether an autopsy was ultimately conducted. Premium Times reported that it could not independently verify reports that she was buried without one, while other reports have stated that no autopsy was conducted.
But whatever the final forensic position may be, the central question remains.
If no autopsy was conducted, on what evidential basis has “cardiac arrest” now become the accepted explanation?
That question cannot be answered merely by saying that the family says so.
The family may be entirely correct.
But correctness and proof are not the same thing.
This is bigger than Mary Habila
The Mary Habila case should not become another Nigerian controversy that disappears after the burial.
It should force a much larger conversation about the administration of justice in Nigeria.
The State must decide whether the investigation of suspicious deaths is a legal obligation or a matter of convenience.
If the law requires investigation, investigate.
If an autopsy is legally necessary, conduct it through the appropriate lawful process.
If the evidence establishes natural death, say so.
If it establishes accidental death, say so.
If it establishes homicide, prosecute whoever is responsible.
If the evidence is inconclusive, say that too.
But “the family says she died of cardiac arrest” cannot be allowed to become the Nigerian substitute for forensic evidence.
Otherwise, we are no longer operating under the rule of law.
We are operating under the rule of whoever gets to tell the final story.
From rule of law to rule of man
This is the deeper point I made in my earlier article.
Nigeria’s problem is not simply that laws are sometimes broken.
It is that we have become comfortable with the idea that laws can be negotiated.
The police can investigate, but somebody can ask them to stop.
The DPP can advise, but somebody can produce a different explanation.
The State can demand evidence, but a family statement can apparently become an alternative.
The law can require accountability, but influence can determine whether accountability survives long enough to reach the courtroom.
That is not the rule of law.
It is rule by discretion.
And when discretion becomes more powerful than law, citizenship becomes unequal.
The powerful get procedure.
The ordinary get condolences.
Nigeria cannot have two causes of death
There cannot be one cause of death for the family, another for the police, another for the DPP and yet another for the public.
There must ultimately be an evidentially established cause of death.
If the family possesses medical evidence establishing that Mary had a cardiac condition and died from a natural cardiac event, that evidence should be produced and examined.
If there is a medical record, let an independent medical expert assess it.
If there is a doctor’s report, let it be part of the evidence.
If there was no autopsy, say so.
Transparency is not an attack on the family.
It is protection for the family.
It is also protection for the Minister.
And, most importantly, it is protection for the Nigerian public.
The final indignity
There is something profoundly sad about a young woman dying at 26 and the country subsequently arguing over whether the State should establish how she died.
Death should end a person’s suffering.
It should not end the State’s obligation to tell the truth.
My previous article described this as a dignity deficit.
Perhaps the latest development gives the phrase an even sharper meaning.
Mary Habila deserved dignity in life.
She deserved dignity in death.
Her family deserves the truth.
The Minister deserves the truth.
The police deserve the truth.
The DPP deserves the truth.
And Nigerian society deserves the truth.
The truth cannot be determined by who speaks last.
It must be determined by evidence.
That is what the rule of law is supposed to mean.
Otherwise, we have quietly moved from the rule of law to the rule of man over the law.
And that is a much more dangerous cause of death for a democracy.
Related reading: When Laws Become Optional: Suspicious Deaths, Colonial Legacies, and the Dignity Deficit in Nigeria, previously published on lawakhigbe.com.
Sources: Premium Times and other contemporary reports cited above. This article does not assert that Mary Habila was murdered or that any named person caused her death. Its argument concerns the evidential and rule-of-law implications of determining the cause of a sudden death without an independent forensic determination.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 