Dr. Ivara Esege, husband of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has published his own account of the death of their son Nkanu Nnamdi, picking up where his wife’s public letter left off. In a column for Guardian Nigeria published June 19, Esege writes that Nkanu was 21 months old when he died at Euracare Hospital on January 7, 2026, less than 24 hours after arriving for diagnostic procedures — an MRI, a PICC line insertion, and a lumbar puncture — ahead of a planned transfer to Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States. Nkanu was conscious, interactive, and stable when he arrived. He died before the transfer could happen. Adichie had been planning her twin sons’ second birthday party at the time.

What follows in Esege’s account is a granular, months-long record of an inquest process that Euracare itself requested and has since tried, by his telling, every available means to delay or kill. Euracare applied for the inquest in January, stating Nkanu’s death was unexpected. The first sitting took place February 25; the coroner directed that Euracare, having applied for the inquest, would present first. At the next sitting on April 14, Euracare arrived unprepared, with what Esege describes as dramatic shouting from their counsel, before arguing, falsely, per the coroner, that there was no clear directive on order of proceedings, and that the inquest could not continue because the body had been cremated. The family had cremated Nkanu on the recommendation of Euracare’s own Chief Medical Director, who suggested the funeral home where it was carried out.

The pattern repeats with almost ritual precision. A May 5 sitting was derailed when Lagos’s Attorney General called an unrequested “restorative justice” meeting for the same morning Esege had flown in from the US specifically to testify; the coroner, learning she had not been informed of this meeting, suspended all proceedings and walked out. At the rescheduled June 3 sitting, Euracare informed the court it had asked a High Court to halt the inquest entirely, again citing the cremation, despite Nigerian coroners’ law explicitly permitting inquests where a body has been destroyed, and despite Euracare itself having initiated the inquest with full knowledge of the cremation. Euracare’s lawyers went further still: they accused the family of “wilful destruction” of evidence through the cremation, telling the court such an act is “punishable by 15 years imprisonment.” Esege calls the accusation sacrilegious: a hospital instructing a grieving father in the very act it had recommended, then weaponizing that recommendation against him in court.

The next sitting is now set for October 8, 2026, not to resume the inquest itself, but merely to check the status of the High Court matter Euracare has filed. That date will fall nine months after Nkanu’s death, a timeline Esege says would likely have already concluded had they been dealing with an honest institution. He notes one piece of independent confirmation that has emerged outside the inquest entirely: the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria’s own investigative panel found, in a letter dated February 25, 2026, that both the Euracare Chief Medical Director and the anaesthesiologist who sedated Nkanu have a case of negligence to answer for. Brittle Paper notes these remain Esege’s and the family’s statements, as highlighted in his column; Euracare has not responded point by point to this latest account.

What Esege’s piece adds to the record his wife began building in April is procedural detail: dates, direct quotes from courtroom exchanges, the precise mechanics of delay. He writes that he can only imagine how many other Nigerian families have endured something similar without the resources to push back against a powerful hospital, and insists this fight is not only about his own family but about ensuring due process for everyone.

It is, in its own register, as devastating as his wife’s letter, carrying the same charge: a family asking for nothing more than the truth, and being met instead with motion after motion designed to ensure they never get it. We continue to hold this family in our thoughts, and we hope the inquest that Euracare itself set in motion is finally allowed to reach its end.