Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s one-year-old son has died after a brief illness.
Nkanu Adichie-Esege, born on March 25, 2024, died after a series of medical procedures at a private hospital in Lagos, per The Guardian. He died on Jan. 6 2026, a day before he was to be flown to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for additional treatment. He was one of twin boys of the author and her husband, Dr. Ivara Esege. The couple also has a 9-year-old daughter.
Last week, Adichie’s PR team released a statement asking for privacy.
“We’re deeply saddened to confirm the passing of one of Ms Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dr Ivara Esege’s twin boys, Nkanu Nnamdi, who passed on Wednesday,” read a statement made by Adichie’s communications team.
“The family is devastated by this profound loss, and we request that their privacy be respected during this incredibly difficult time,” continued the statement, signed by Omawumi Ogbe of GLG Communications. “We ask for your grace and prayers as they mourn in private.”
“No further statements will be made, and we thank the public and the media for respecting their need for seclusion during this period of immense grief.”
In an update report, Adichie and her family are now pressing the hospital for more information. In a legal notice dated January 10, 2026, she accuses Euracare hospital of medical negligence and professional impropriety. The notice demands for CCTV footage, electronic monitoring data and the toddler’s medical records within seven days. The notice alleged there were lapses during the child’s admission and lack of basic resuscitation equipment at the facility amounting to medical negligence.
According to the legal notice, it was during transportation to the cardiac catheterisation laboratory after the MRI that the child developed sudden and severe complications.
The notice blames the hospital for reportedly transferring the child between clinical areas under conditions that raised “serious and substantive concerns” about compliance with patient-safety protocols, even as he was under sedation.
In a private WhatsApp chat that was leaked on social media, Adichie described this experience, as “living your worst nightmare.”
The renown author accused Euracare of negligence, saying a doctor had directly told her that the resident anaesthesiologist had administered an overdose of propofol, a sedative. Despite resuscitation and being put on a ventilator, Nkanu suffered a cardiac arrest that led to his death.
Adichie said in the message that the anaesthesiologist had been “fatally casual and careless”.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian author whose work has been translated into over thirty languages.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Her 2013 novel, Americanah, won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
Adichie has received honorary doctorate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, Haverford College, Williams College, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Amherst College, Bowdoin College, and SOAS, University of London.