Families and friends of Lagos big boy, Fred Omame are yet to come to terms with death of their son, brother, colleague and loved one who died a couple of weeks back at 42. Fred was a big boy in all ramifications, and was also successful in his career. He was the Managing Partner/COO, QED Technologies Ltd, Lagos.
For him, it was a one year battle before he finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks back and was also buried almost immediately. Before the death, Fred was hospitalized for almost a year. The genesis of his health problem actually started last year Easter, when he was involved in a ghastly power bike accident on Third Mainland Bridge, Lagos. This is because apart from his business acumen, another part of his life that Fred enjoyed is riding on power bikes. He was critically and seriously injured from the accident. And for him, his healing process was slow and steady. Fred had a chest infection whilst at St Nicholas hospital in Lagos where he was rushed to after the accident which became a serious battle for him.
Fred was flown to South Africa 10 months ago and an operation was carried out on him. He was then placed on antibiotics and the doctors were hoping that he would be able to recuperate but when that did not happened, they had to assist in clearing the chest so he can breath a lot better. His neck bones were healing nicely but the physio could not commence until he is in full health. There were daily CT scans to monitor the progress. He was taken out of intensive care and put in the normal ward. But at the time when family and friends taught he was getting better, he developed some complications and had to be returned back to the intensive unit where he was for weeks.
At this point, the bill keeps increasing, because for each day he spends in intensive care, the bill then was 24,000 Rand(approx 1,800 pounds). Obviously, the sooner he left the ICU, the better financially. At this point, a lot of his families, friends, colleagues, bikers association all rallied around him and was able to raise some funds for his hospital bill and treatment. Most of the money was paid into Fred’s sister bank account, to keep their friend alive and everybody was waiting for a positive news about his health improvement.
His health also improved, and towards the end of last year, he was brought back into the country, and transferred to a Lagos hospital recuperating, though he was not100% physically fit, the family just had to bring him home as the hospital bill kept increasing and everyone’s generally believe was that since his healing had started, it would get better by the time he got back to Nigeria. A lot of his friends were so happy to have him back home as his recovery process had also commenced, and had been recuperating ever since. So it was a deep shock to a lot of people when the news of his death broke 3 weeks ago. This was because, a lot of people had actually thought he had survived the crisis and his health was stable. According to information, Fred fell into coma and died and that was it. It was painful to everyone reason been that after fighting the battle for a year and went through so much pains, he still gave up the ghost. He was finally laid to rest on February 5th, 2011. Procession actually started from Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, Lagos to the Victoria Cementry, Lekki. It was a very sad and gloomy day for everyone present at the event. This is because he was loved by all, he was a very nice and easy going felow who desired to live.
And Fred is not the only Power Biker that had died in recent times. Recalled that a Lagos big boy, Tamunotonye Boma Claude- Wilcox also died on 21st of January, 2011 from power bike accident too. It was also a shocking experience, as in his own case, he waved goodbye few hours earlier to his friends in Lagos, and while his friends were still waiting for him in Porthacourt, they were hit with the sudden and devastating news of his death. He was said to have set off for Port-Harcourt from Lagos to attend the traditional wedding of Tonye Graham-Douglas and had called ahead to let them know. To usher his friend out of Bacherlorhood, he chose to make the trip from Lagos to Port-Harcourt on his bike! City People learnt that it was a smooth ride until just after Warri around Patani, just about an hour to Port-Harcourt. Along the Uvwreni junction, he was said to have collided with a vehicle and died instantly. Just like Fred, Tonye too was a big boy and well known within the Downstream Oil sector, he used to work with Sahara Energy before he left to co-start Petroleum Brokers Ltd who are Energy Trailers.
The interesting thing is that Fred and Tonye are both members of one of the most popular bikers club in the country, Easy Rider.