Passion for football sometimes could prove addictive to the point of death. This was literally the case of Abdul Lateef Shittu, a man described as quiet, friendly and easy-going, who after watching a premiership football match, which he felt strongly did not end the way he wanted, suffered a sudden but fatal cardiac arrest. The forty year old, described as an ardent football fan, lived at Oremerin House on Oremerin Street, Kudeyibu Estate, Ijegun, Ikotun, Lagos. He was married man and was a father of three kids.

The shocking incident happened on September 17, 2012, the day Everton played Newcastle in the English Premier League. Shittu, who hailed from Ilesha, Osun State, joined other football fans at a nearby viewing centre to watch the football clash. According to an eyewitness, the deceased was deeply engrossed with the match as it progressed. He joined in the argument, analyses and even in the celebration of the goals scored during the match. Though a diehard Chelsea fan, he was nevertheless unhappy that the match ended in a 2-2 draw. “He was definitely sad the way the match ended”, an eye witness recalled, he was in a sombre mood when the game ended.

When the match ended at about 10:30pm, the deceased lamented bitterly while strolling back to his house. By the time he got home, he complained to his wife of a nagging chest pain even as he sat down to eat his dinner. Thereafter, he went to bed, only to wake up minutes later with a disturbing condition of uneven and difficult breath and high temperature.

Petrified by her husband’s abnormal condition, his wife, popularly called Iya Quoyim, raised an alarm and drew neighbours’ attention. Shittu was rushed to a hospital (name withheld) located within the vicinity in Kudeyibu Estate, Ijegun, Lagos, where he was reportedly rejected due to his being a non-registered patient of the hospital. Despite pleas, eyewitnesses alleged that the hospital refused to budge. The critically-ill man was subsequently taken to another hospital where he was rejected again on the ground that his case was too severe and could only be treated at a better-equipped hospital.

Sources claimed that he was further rejected by two other hospitals, a disturbing situation which prompted his family to begin to think that there was more to his case than meets the eye.
“We began to wonder if he was suffering from spiritual attack, ” a neighbour who craved anonymity and was a witness to the whole episode avowed.

Frustrated and confused, his wife and neighbours found themselves at the end of their tethers, until a passerby told them that going by his apparent conditions, it appeared he was suffering from high blood pressure and suggested that he should be taken to a General Hospital. Unfortunately, Shittu whose condition had worsened considerably by that time breathed his last few minutes later and was buried the same day according to Islamic injunctions. The family he left behind is still mourning the painful loss.