By Oyinkansayo Wole-Bodunde.
A tragic incident occurred at a hostel along Ife Express Road in Moro, where a student of Obafemi Awolowo University’s Centre for Distance Learning lost his life while trying to retrieve a football.
According to eyewitnesses, the student had been playing football with his colleagues when the ball landed in a nearby compound. He volunteered to scale the fence to retrieve it, unaware of the danger that awaited him. “He had picked the ball but unknowing to him that rainfall had exposed a naked wire at the place he wanted to climb up from, he got electrocuted and was rushed to Catholic hospital at Ipetumodu where he was confirmed dead.”
The school’s management confirmed the incident, with spokesperson Abiodun Olarewaju expressing sadness over the loss. “It is unfortunate that we recorded an incident that was not too palatable yesterday where we lost a prominent youngster. One of our CDL students who was aspiring to come to the university after the completion of the programme.” Olarewaju explained that the student had followed a rule among his colleagues, where the person who kicked the ball into the compound was responsible for retrieving it.
Olarewaju added, “Report had it that they were playing football in the evening and the ball fell into a compound that was fenced and unknown to the young boy, he jumped into the fence because he was the one that played the ball into the compound and it was a rule that anybody who played the ball into the compound will go to retrieve it.” The student retrieved the ball and threw it back to his colleagues but was electrocuted when he tried to climb out.
The student was rushed to the facility at the Center for Distance Learning, where he was pronounced dead. The Director of the CDL, Professor Femi Koya, had already contacted the parents to inform them of the incident. “It was when his colleagues felt he should have come back to the pitch that they went to check and saw that he was there shivering. They rushed to him, one of them picked a stick and removed the life wire from his hand and rushed him to the facility at the Center for Distance Learning in the university. According to him, he was brought in dead, and they took him to another hospital where they said the boy was already dead.”
