Victor Asemota Shares ‘Near-Death Experience Inside Radisson Blu Hotel Lagos’

Confession: I am trying hard to stop having feelings of “Thank goodness I left” whenever I hear of any tragedy in Nigeria but by relationship with Nigeria has been abusive. I have had near-death experiences on visits even after I left. People die there daily needlessly. DAILY!

There is so much casualness to matters of life and death that you would think that these people don’t realize that it could also happen to them. Someone talked about people blocking an ambulance in traffic and I imagined myself in 2014 almost bleeding to death in Victoria Island.

The same casual and careless approach to the lives of others led me there and almost killed me. I got to Nigeria from Ghana for a meeting with TOTAL and checked into Radisson Blu hotel. I decided to take a shower before the meeting and it was around noon. It was almost fatal.

The glass bathroom door broke and almost amputated my leg. I still have a slight limp and cant bend that leg fully while taking a shower. There was luckily limited vascular damage but there was extensive nerve damage as I am finding out years later. They didn’t use tempered glass.

This was meant to be one of the very top hotels in Nigeria at the time and it was stupidly expensive. They also didn’t have any emergency services and no stretcher or ambulance. They were trying to sneak me out through the back stairway on the back of a porter to avoid a scene.

I could have died instantly and that was how they could have sneaked my body out too without anyone knowing. The next thing that happened was even worse. They were trying to take me to some strange hospital that I didn’t know on the other side if Victoria Island in bad traffic.

Redington Hospital was not far from them but they didn’t even consider it. That was what pissed me off the most. I’m asked if they would have done that if I wasn’t black? Nobody answered. I got them to take me to Redington and that was what saved my life as I was losing blood.

We got to Redington and they were wasting my time. I only discovered after asking that they wanted a deposit and the hotel people who brought me had disappeared. The hotel management was not reachable. Luckily I had some Naira and transferred 1 million Naira to them from Gtbank.

Another stroke of luck was having a trauma surgeon who had worked in Pamplona, Spain with expertise in led injuries present. He had just finished a shift but he agreed to do surgery as the other doctor was not yet around. He saved my leg and my life. It was traumatic.

I walked with crutches for months and till today I can’t bath in a bathroom that has glass doors unless I see TEMPERED GLASS boldly written. Even then, I am extremely careful. I am sure the people who built the hotel didn’t care if that kind of accident was even possible.

I am taking my time but they will all pay dearly for this.

*my relationship
*I asked
*leg injuries

So many typos as it still makes me emotional. I had a 6-month-old baby son at the time who could have not known me if I had died.