TAKE care of yourselves. I love you all.”
These were the exact words from Dr. Suraj Giwa, Medical Director and Head of Physiotherapy at the General Hospital, Lagos just 48 hours before his death. It was not that he had any premonition of his death. If he did really, nobody is in a position now to say so.
Giwa lived in Nigeria while his family (wife and three children) reside in London. On this day like he always did, he had called his wife on phone and he had a long chat with her and the children. Before hanging up, he said to them as stated above: “Take care of yourselves. I love you all.”
These words have continued to re-echo in the minds of Mrs. Olufunke Giwa, wife of the deceased and her children because they were the last words that they heard from their husband and father.
Besides, on April 17, 2006, the late Giwa would have attained the golden age (50 years). As part of the celebration, he had agreed with his family that he was going to join them in London to mark the special day. Everyone looked forward to it with understandable excitement because the last time he visited was July 2005.
All that is now history, no thanks to the accident that claimed Suraj Giwa’s life after his car was involved in a crash with artiste, Daniel Wilson’s jeep which was being driven on that day by former beauty queen and popular actress, Miss Ibinabo Fiberesima along the Lekki-Ajah road in lagos.
Mrs. Giwa, painfully made a widow today by that singular tragedy, is back in Nigeria to prepare the ground towards giving her departed husband a befitting burial. Yet, she seethes with anger that she is yet to see some measure of remorse from “those” who plunged her into unexpected widowhood that she neither dreamt of, nor bargained for.
Hear her heart-rending story: “With his death, a huge chunk of me is gone,” she said amid tears. “I returned from London to pay my last respects to a man (Giwa) who meant everything to us. “He was a husband every woman would desire to have; a father that is a blessing to the kids. I don’t say so necessarily because he’s
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