AgegePulse Magazine
For the family of the late Emmanuel Okwuke, banana and plantain have become forbidden fruits. No member of the family dares bring them home. This was after Emmanuel’s life was cut short after he consumed a bunch of his favourite fruit, banana, which he bought on the way home.
The former Information and Communications Technology Editor of Daily Independent Newspapers first battled a damaged liver before giving up the ghost on December 24, 2016.
Two years after the incident, his widow, Juli, said their life had been changed forever by the incident.
Recalling how it all started, she said, “In March 2016, he went for an event on Victoria Island and on his way back, he bought the banana at the Ketu market. My husband did not like late hour food and he always told me not to prepare food for him when it was late. So, even the food they gave him at the event, he did not taste it. He brought everything home.
“He started eating the banana inside the BRT bus en route to the house. On getting home around 12am, I was inside the room when my mother, who had come to stay with us, woke me up to say my husband had been going to the bathroom since he returned from work.
“I rushed there and he told me since he ate the banana he bought at the market, his stomach had been troubling him. He said he was in the office all day without feeling anything, until he took the fruit. He was also vomiting blood.”
She said he was admitted to a general hospital for four days and later transferred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, for tests.
The widow said it was there the fruit he took last was examined and it was discovered calcium carbide was used in the ripening.
She noted that after some treatment, her husband was fine until he relapsed in July of the same year and was in and out of hospitals until he died on the eve of Christmas.
Punch Newspaper
