Wife of late Biafra Leader and former Nigeria Ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain who is presently Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs has given a firsthand account of events as they transpired in the Vatican City, Rome during the installation Ceremonial Mass for the inauguration of the papacy of Pope Leo XIV.
One of the dramatic moments she recounted was when one of the dignitaries present at the mass slumped during the mass, and it took the intervention of the son of Nigeria’s President Seyi Tinubu to revive him.
According to Mrs Ojukwu, who recounted the event in a recent Facebook post,
‘
the Vatican, most specifically, Mass , at St Peter’s Basilica is a leveler. No matter who you are, you are sitting out in that square under the scorching sun. No special luxury tents or canopies for dignitaries. No airconditioners or fans. People routinely faint and pass out from sunstroke/ heatstroke and have to be evacuated in stretchers or wheelchairs.
In fact, the man seated in front of me slumped during the mass. It was Seyi Tinubu who saved the day. The. bottle of water he had ‘travelled’ all the way to the vestibule to procure was what he then offered to the man, who we were trying to hold from hitting the ground until the emergency medical team arrived with a wheelchair to evacuate him.
What is instructive is that unlike what obtains in our climes of recent, nobody rushed to whip out their phones to record an individual in distress to start posting all over social media. Folks were just busy trying to help stabilize the man….
