A 26-year-old barber named Zuri, mysteriously passed away in Lagos after
stepping out to sneeze but ended up vomiting blood. According to
journalist Femi Owolabi, because of the amount of blood around the
young man’s body, the crowd which had gathered did not risk
coming close and were unwilling to assist in taking him to the hospital.
When a truck was eventually used to convey Zuri to a private hospital,
they were not allowed to go in. A doctor came out to check the body,
pronounced him dead and ordered that they take the body away immediately
as he was not their patient. Narrating what happened, Femi said;
just returned to Lagos, and in my usual routine, I retire to a local
bar where the discourse around local and national politics is being
fuelled by drinks. Zuri, 26, one of those boys who migrated from the
village to seek greener pastures in Lagos, runs the saloon beside the
bar. When in Lagos, Zuri barbed me. I couldn’t wait to return from the
northeast for Zuri to attend to my bushy hair. He barbed almost
perfectly.
Yesterday, since I’m on a self-imposed ‘leave’
in Lagos, we had resumed at the bar early where a friend was hosting me
to a bottle of Alomo Bittters. Zuri sat with us, he sat beside me, and
we were telling him on how to improve on the business and not spend all
his earnings on women and drinks. We were all together for hours before
he left to see a barber friend of his.
Barely ,
one of Zuri’s friends in the neighbourhood rushed in. His face was
soaked with tears, and he was screaming, ‘Zuri! Zuri!!’ I gulped down
the content in my mouth. ‘What’s wrong with Zuri?!’ we collectively
asked the friend. ‘He is vomiting blood… he is…’
In no time,
we arrived at the scene, some 6km away. I met a circle of crowd around
my barber. Blood in his nose, eyes, mouth, and ears. And he looked
lifeless. I shut my eyes. I opened them. I shut my eyes again. And I
opened them again. Because of the too much blood, perhaps, the crowd
feared touching him. I moved closer and held his hand, and checked the
inside of his wrist to feel his pulse.
‘Where is the nearest
hospital?’ I asked his barber friend whom he had come to see. The friend
was already running mad. ‘Ha! I’ve never seen this kind of thing,’ he
cried. ‘He barbed me here in my shop, and he just stepped out to sneeze
and that was how blood started coming out of his mouth and nose.’
The
nearest hospital was about 4km away. Unfortunately, no one was willing
to give us a car to move him. We settled for a wheelbarrow one Mai-Ruwa
offered and we sped off to the hospital. While we pushed him, I
continually called out his name, checking his chest if he was still
breathing.
‘He’s gone,’ the doctor announced. We weren’t even
allowed to move him inside. The doctor came out with his stethoscope to
check him. It’s a private hospital and after a while, the doctor became
so uncomfortable and he called on me to come take his corpse away. That
he wasn’t their patient. I got so confused, not knowing what next to do.
I
had earlier called the Lagos Emergency line. They arrived to meet him
dead. ‘We don’t pick dead bodies,’ I was told. ‘So what do we do?’ I
asked. ‘Call the Emergency line again, there are ambulances that would
come pick him.’ I called, gave my details and the address of the place
we were. ‘We are coming,’ I was told. After about an hour, I called
again. ‘We are coming,’. I was told.
The doctor was
getting angry. He called on me. ‘Take this corpse away!’ he boomed. I
begged him for more time. Since the Lagos Emergency guys ain’t
forthcoming, I asked where we could hire an ambulance. I didn’t get any
suggestion.
The friend, eventually, got in touch with Zuri’s
family. And we were told to bring his corpse to their village, somewhere
in Ogun State.
I, with some other guys, rushed down to the
nearest police station to get a police report. We were gonna be delayed
and extorted, but I had to use my connection with the top police guys.
Dark already. No ambulance. And we just had to use a Danfo to move Zuri to his village.
‘He
is the first child of his mother, and anytime he goes visiting the
mother in the village, he buys beverages and all for her,’ Zuri’s
neighbour told me.
Since yesterday, I am yet to fully understand
what led to the death of a young man who sat beside me few hours before
the announcement of his death.