The family of 12-year-old Enoch Ayomide is appealing for financial assistance to enable him undergo a corrective surgery after complications from a failed operation left him unable to defecate through his anus. According to his father, Paul Ayomide, the Lagos-based boy has lived with a stoma for over 14 months, passing stool through an opening on his abdomen where part of his intestine now protrudes.
Speaking in an interview, Ayomide explained that the family had spent more than N5 million on treatments, hospital visits, and medical supplies, but now requires an additional N4 million for a reversal surgery at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). “This N4m is standing between my son and a return to normal life. He has not worn normal clothes or gone to school since early 2024,” the distraught father said.
The ordeal began when Enoch started experiencing persistent stomach pains initially mistaken for typhoid and malaria. After months of misdiagnoses, he was admitted at LUTH, where doctors discovered that typhoid had perforated his intestines. Emergency surgery led to the creation of a stoma, which now forces him to defecate uncontrollably through his abdomen. His parents, both teachers, have since quit their jobs to provide round-the-clock care, relying on costly antiseptics, cotton wool, and colostomy bags to prevent infections.
Ayomide said the situation has taken a heavy emotional toll on his son, who is confined at home and unable to join his peers in school. “He cries when he sees his friends going to school. He misses church, and sometimes the shame of his condition makes him break down in tears,” he lamented. The father added that well-meaning Nigerians, church members, and friends had supported them in the past, but the funds have been exhausted.
A medical report signed by Dr. Felix Alakaloko, a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at LUTH, confirmed that Enoch had undergone exploratory laparotomy and ileostomy due to typhoid perforation and severe anaemia, and now requires a follow-up surgery to restore normal bowel function. The family is pleading with Nigerians, humanitarian organisations, and government agencies to intervene and give the boy “a chance to be a child again.”
