Who Is After Mr Ibu?

No doubt, John Okafor, popularly known as Mr. Ibu, is one of the best comic actors in Nigeria. Aside the fact that he has carved a niche for himself in Nollywood; he is equally a down to earth person. He is a generous person, but events around him lately suggest he may have some enemies.

Okafor, who lost his three-year-old son, Emmanuel Mandela Okafor on Monday, last week, says the little boy’s death was not natural, claiming that he died of a spiritual attack or food poisoning.

The bereaved actor, who is obviously devastated at the moment, wondered why some people could decide to punish him by killing his most prized possession, Mandela.

Initially when NollywoodReel called him shortly after the incident to commiserate with him, he denied that the late child was ill, but declined to give details to what led to his death. But in chat over the weekend, he disclosed that he suspects foul play.

NollywoodReel gathered that the late Mandela was hale and hearty before he travelled with his parents to their village in Enugu State during the Christmas/New Year festivities. But shortly after they returned to their Lagos residence in Satellite Town, the boy fell ill.

According to Mr. Ibu, Mandela was initially taken to two hospitals before the last doctor referred them to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, where series of tests and scans could not diagnose the little boy’s ailment.

“They demanded for blood and incidentally as a result of the situation, I was already running a temperature and not fit enough to donate blood. I however assured them that if they could get blood from anywhere I don’t mind the cost. Fortunately for me, my two personal assistants who were with me had a matching blood type and they donated two pints as against one pint that was needed.

“To transfuse the blood into the boy became a problem because according to the doctors, they didn’t have light to treat it and their generator was not functioning. I lost the boy while waiting for the blood to be treated,” Okafor explained.

The actor buttressed his claim of smell foul play with the explanation that two years ago, the same boy (Mandela) and his mother were kidnapped in Enugu when he took them there to celebrate the Christmas/New Year festivities. They were kidnapped on 4 January, 2010 and released on 14 of the same month.

He further argued that if the illness of Mandela was natural, doctors would have diagnosed it before he eventually died. “I strongly believe he died of poisoning.”