Eniye Igodo, the elder brother of a 43-year-old electrician in Bayelsa State, Sobokime Igodo, who was attacked two days to Christmas by a cow intended to be slaughtered for Yuletide celebration, has narrated how the sad incident happened.
In an interview, Eniye said: “Actually, you know we are in the festive season and he and his group of friends decided to contribute money to buy a cow so that they could slaughter it and share among themselves and make merriment with their families.
“So, on December 23, they brought the cow to his residence as the secretary of the group. But where the cow was kept was not the actual spot they wanted to slaughter and butcher it. They tried to move the cow to the spot where they wanted to slaughter it, but the cow refused to move. It stayed put to the ground. Somebody was holding the rope with which they tied it.
“Suddenly, the cow got up and rushed towards Sobokime and attacked him, hitting him, and he fell to the ground immediately. The person holding the rope could not restrain the cow as it got loose from the rope. The cow left him and ran in another direction after nobody in particular.
“We were expecting him to stand up from the ground but he could not. He lost consciousness briefly, but regained it almost immediately. We asked him how he was feeling and he said it felt like he was floating; we tried to raise his hand but it fell down. We also tried to raise his legs, no way.
“Instantly, he said he could not feel any sensation in any part of his body. There was complete paralysis. We rushed him to the Yenagoa Federal Medical Centre. The doctor who attended to him said he had sustained a spinal cord injury and that the hospital had no specialist to handle his case.
“The doctor then recommended that we should take him to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital or University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital or Enugu. So, we chose to take him to UPTH since it is closest to us.”
ll the driver to drive more carefully. We got to Yenagoa in the evening and took his corpse home, but we later decided to take it to the mortuary.”
