Nigeria yesterday lost one of its illustrious sportsmen, Stephen Keshi, who previously captained and coached the national team, the Super Eagles.
Keshi reportedly died of “pains and distress.”
His death came just about six months after his wife, Kate, passed on and was buried in January this year.
Keshi’s sudden passage came as a shock to Nigerians, sports officials, enthusiasts, fans, friends, associates and contemporaries who mourn and pour tributes on him.
The football legend died at the Faith Mediplex Hospital located off Airport Road in Benin, the Edo State capital.
Already, Keshi’s remains had been removed from Faith Mediplex Hospital complex and deposited at the Stella Obasanjo Hospital morgue also in Benin City.
The brother-in-law to late Keshi, Mr. Ricky Aburime, narrated how the deceased suffered from stress and pains in the leg before he was rushed to the hospital where doctor confirmed him dead.
According to Aburime, “Keshi had complained of pains and asked that he be massaged. As the massaging was going on, all of a sudden, we noticed that his countenance changed and was in distress.
“He (Keshi) said he didn’t like the way he was feeling. The person that was with him, Ebuka, rushed out and requested that he should be taken to the hospital.
Aburime further explained that the late Super Eagles coach was never a patient at Faith Mediplex Hospital, which would not allow the hospital to give any kind of report or offer death certificate.
“As such, we decided to involve the police who inspected the body before the hospital staff were able to deposit it in the mortuary,” he said.
He added that the family would conduct an autopsy on Keshi’s body in order to ascertain the actual cause of his death contrary to speculations that he died of cardiac arrest.
His words: “Let no one speculate, for the avoidance of doubt that is why we want to do an autopsy. That is why we are not embalming his body now. We are going to preserve him until the experts can do the proper pathology on the body before we can now embalm and start talking about burying him and, I think at that point, we can now lay everything to rest.
“The time between when we carried him from the house to the hospital was not more than 20 minutes when the doctor confirmed him dead on arrival,” Aburime said.