THE Lagos State Government has ordered a postmortem on nine-month-old identical twins, Testimony and Timothy Alozie, following allegation that they died about 24 hours after receiving routine immunisation at a primary health care centre.
According to Punch, the Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Primary Health Care Board, Ibrahim Mustafa, revealed this on Saturday, noting that investigations had begun and a postmortem had been ordered to determine the cause of death.
“We sympathise with them and we understand the grief these parents will be going through, but we would like for the right things to be done and the right decisions to be taken. It is being investigated by the police, and we are also doing our investigation as a state. We are expecting the postmortem findings. This particular vaccine has been given to many children before and after these kids, and nothing like this has been recorded,” he said.
He said the bodies of the twins were taken to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital morgue, stressing that the government would make the outcome of its investigation public.
“Once the postmortem findings are out, we will communicate appropriately,” he said.
The ICIR reports that the father of the twins, Samuel Alozie, known on TikTok as Promise Samuel, said he was concerned that the investigation might be compromised to shield the government-owned health facility. He described the process as “government to government.”
“Please, if you are a lawyer, a human rights lawyer, help me. I don’t have money to fight this alone. I need justice for these children,” he pleaded.
The ICIR reported that Alozie’s case gained widespread attention after he posted videos showing his sons’ bodies in separate body bags, alleging the children fell ill and died shortly after vaccination.
In a video shared on Thursday, Alozie said he took the twins for routine immunisation on December 24, 2025, and claimed they became critically weak almost immediately after the injections.
“They could not eat, they could not play, they could not even disturb as they used to. They were just weak,” he said.
According to him, a nurse at the health centre advised that the children be given paracetamol if their temperature rose. He said he and his wife administered the drug and also bathed them in cold water, but their condition did not improve.
“It happened that the immunisation was conducted on the 24th of December in the morning, and on the morning of 25th December, they died. On the 24th, after the injection, they were very weak, and I gave them paracetamol because the nurse said that if the temperature continued, I should give them paracetamol.
My wife bathed them in cold water. They died on the 25th. The two of them died at the same time. The drug weakened them to the extent that they couldn’t talk, they couldn’t eat, they couldn’t play as usual,” he said.
The distraught father said the twins were healthy before the immunisation and that he had always ensured they received their routine vaccines from birth.
“I’m just confused. How can I lose two children, identical twins that I have suffered so much for? Just nine months, they were not sick. Just because I decided to fulfil the righteousness of taking them for immunisation,” he said.
The bereaved father also noted that the nurse who administered the last injections was not the regular official who usually attended to his children. He rejected preliminary explanations from the health centre that the deaths might have been caused by “food bacteria.”
“The nurse is talking about bacteria, food bacteria. She said that it is food bacteria that killed my children. How can food bacteria kill a child? Food that I’ve been giving them from one month to nine months did not kill them,” he said.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues. She has documented sexual war crimes in armed conflict, sex for grades in Nigerian Universities, harmful traditional practices and human trafficking.