Peter Fregene must not be abandoned

Not for the first time, pictures of Peter ‘Apo’ Fregene in a truly pathetic state, looking like a 100-year old man, unwell and dying, have inundated the information-superhighway.

I cannot recall exactly but we have been on his health situation for almost two decades. The story is that, many years ago, Peter collapsed in the bathroom of his flat in Warri after training one morning after taking his bath. He could not lift himself from the floor where he lay in a heap. Following his scream for help his wife helped him to his wobbly painful feet and took him to the hospital where they found out that he had suffered, from ‘nowhere’, some kind of permanent paralysis in his limbs. There was no immediate medical explanation for his condition. Since then, things have never been the same for him. He has been unable to work again and earn a living.   When Babatunde Raji Fashola was governor of Lagos State, as a former football player himself and a member of the Lagos State branch of the All-Stars International Football Club, a social national body for retired footballers that meet and play football every weekend in centres around the country, we took ‘Apo’s’ case to him and the governor immediately intervened. Peter was brought by Ambulance from Warri to Lagos and admitted to the best and most expensive private hospital in the city. He spent several months there conducting various tests and receiving some palliative treatment. A renowned Nigerian neuro-surgeon based in the United States, who was visiting Nigeria on his usual annual work to conduct special surgeries examined Peter. He performed a surgery on Peter that partially relieved him of some pain and restored some movement in his limbs. Within months, with a lot of