Human rights defender Chidiebube Okeoma took home her twin boys, who were confiscated by a medical doctor after giving birth to the babies on May 4, 2024, because their mother could not afford the medical bill.

Okeoma, in a statement on Saturday in Owerri, the Imo State capital, said the Commissioner of Police, Aboki Danjuma, should be commended for his professional and paternalistic intervention that ensured that the twin boys went home despite the doctor’s insistence to continue holding them. It is against basic human rights.

He said that he was not the first person to go to the delivery room to demand that the babies and their 19-year-old mother be discharged, but the doctor made it very impossible.

Okeoma explained that CP’s intervention was laudable after the doctor admitted before him in his office on Thursday that he had jokingly asked for the babies to be exchanged instead of the birth bill.

The activist explained that in addition to taking the babies home for the first time since they were born about six months ago, citizens were able to secure the babies’ release thanks to her efforts, buying food items, diapers and giving cash. N100,000 to the twins’ mother.

He called on the commissioner to charge the doctor with hostage-taking, abuse of medical ethics and attempting to endanger the twins’ identities.

The activist explained that her team was not the first to arrive to release the twins, but the doctor continued to increase delivery fees to make it difficult for those who came to release them.

Okeoma called on the police chief to set up a panel to investigate the attack by his doctors and nurses on the 19-year-old breastfeeding mother and the children’s grandmother.