Oyo govt donates N.5m for Jossy Lad’s treatment

THE Oyo State government has doled out the sum of N500,000 for the treatment of former Shooting Stars player and coach, Joseph Ladipo, more popularly known as Jossy Lad, who has been in and out of hospital in the last few months.

The state Commissioner for Youth and Sports, Mr Adedapo Lam-Adesina, accompanied by  Shooting Stars board members, led by the chairman, Mr Toyin Akintunde, on Monday gave the money to the family of the former Super Falcons coach and reassured them of the government’s continued support.

Coach Jossy Lad, as he is fondly called, is currently on admission following complications from prostrate enlargement and heart disease. The former Leventis Football Club coach is currently receiving treatment at a herbal hospital in Ibadan.

The coach, according to one of his children, Tunji Ladipo, while speaking with Tribunesport at the hospital on Monday, was diagnosed with prostrate enlargement in 2005 and was receiving treatment at a private hospital in Ibadan until 2006 when he was again diagnosed with heart disease. Tunji noted that his dad stopped receiving treatment in 2007 due to lack of funds.

He said: “He started receiving treatment again in 2010 after he was appointed as 3SC board chairman. He takes a certain prescribed drug that costs N10,000 over three days. There is another one which will be sufficient for one week and that one is N5,000. Actually, we brought him to the hospital in February and we were asked to deposit the sum of N150,000 before he could be admitted. This was where the Commissioner for Sports, Oyo State, Mr Dapo Lam-Adesina came in. He gave us the N150,000 and when the hospital asked us to pay another N200,000, he also made it available. So far, he has spent N350,000.”

Tunji further stated that his father was discharged on March 1, 2013 due to non-availability of funds to offset hospital bills running into several thousands of naira. He was last Thursday rushed back to the hospital after he slumped at his Alexander, Apata, residence. As of Monday, morning the hospital bill stood at N980,000.

Tunji, who is currently with him at the hospital, is now appealing to well-meaning Nigerians, most especially the football fraternity to come to his dad’s aid, adding that his father must not be left to die just like that as he has spent better part of his life serving the country.(tribune)