There is growing concern by family, friends and the general citizens over a Nigerian polio specialist, Dr Chukwuemeka Agbo, working with the World Health Organization (WHO), who was allegedly killed on June 9, 2024, in Amman, Jordan, where he was working for the international agency as a polio technical officer.
According to WHO, Emeka, aged 45, was a valued member of its workforce for ten years, supporting immunization, polio eradication, and Ebola outbreak response in the African and Eastern Mediterranean regions. He joined the Polio Eradication team in Amman Jordan early this year in February 2024.
Family sources said that a few weeks prior to his death, Agbo expressed deep concerns due to the persistent hostile attitudes of some WHO colleagues since he took up his position in the WHO office in Jordan.
On the early morning of Sunday, June 9, 2024, he was found dead on the back of the first floor of his apartment, probably killed. At the time of notification, the family was told by WHO in Amman that he fell from the roof of a three-storey building to the ground – a story which turned out to be different from the information received by the family while in Amman, Jordan as more enquiries were made.
Agbo’s brother, Jideofor Agbo, who traveled to Amman from London to identify the deceased, said that when he saw Emeka’s corpse, it didn’t look like someone who fell from any height. He said that the injuries on the body of his brother looked like someone who had been attacked. Two autopsies have since been conducted to ascertain what happened to Dr. Emeka Agbo. One of the autopsies was conducted by the Jordanian authorities, and the second was conducted in Nigeria at the request of the family.
According to Jideofor, “The reputable pathologists confirmed that my brother’s skull was shattered by blunt force trauma and conclusively ruled out suicide or accidental death. We have requested the initial report from WHO Jordan on how they concluded that my brother fell from the roof of the three-storey building to the ground. They are yet to respond to this request.
“The lack of communication from the Jordanian authorities also has been a significant challenge, and we are concerned that the delay may result in loss of crucial evidence,” Jideofor further lamented.”
The family lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), believes that based on the autopsy findings, the cause of Dr. Chukwuemeka Agbo’s death is homicide and called for justice. Falana noted that the doctors examined the body and established a case of massive intracranial hemorrhage (bleeding within the brain or its surrounding tissues), multiple skull fractures, and injuries that could not have arisen from a single fall.
“According to him, “The autopsy suggested consistent trauma, and interestingly, the findings of the pathologists here were reconfirmed by the Jordanian autopsy in their investigation. The World Health Organization should have investigated the incident even without demand from the family. I wrote to the Director General of the WHO on behalf of the family, and I’m yet to receive a response from him,” stated Falana.
Before joining the Polio Eradication Programme in Amman, Dr Agbo served as the GPEI Coordinator for Kenya, managing the response to cholera and polio outbreaks.
From February 2022 to December 2023, he served as the GPEI Coordinator in Malawi, where he led the outbreak responses to the importation of wild poliovirus type 1, measles, and cholera. For 10 years, he served WHO and the Gates Foundation and successfully led large-scale responses to disease outbreaks in the Horn of Africa.
Before joining WHO, Dr. Agbo worked in the private sector and with a non-profit organization as a medical officer in the Netherlands and Nigeria. Married with three children, Emeka hailed from Neke in Isi-Uzo local government area of Enugu state.
Citizens are of the opinion that the Federal Government of Nigeria through the Diaspora Commission should step in to find out from the WHO in Amman on how they arrived at the submission that Dr. Agbo fell from the balcony, which his autopsy has proved otherwise. Medical health practitioners are also afraid that if Agbo’s homicide is left unresolved, the lives of Nigerians embarking on foreign medical missions may as well be in jeopardy.
