17 Month-Old Baby Dies After Drinking Kerosene

A 17-month-old baby has died after drinking about  60 centilitres (cl) of kerosene in Ilorin.
The toddler who lived with his parents at Kuntu/Agbo-Oba area in Ilorin West and simply identified as Afeez (not the one pictured) was said to have mistaken the kerosene for water and drank it, having just finished eating rice with his elder sister.

Explaining how the unfortunate incident happened, the mother of the victim, who is a kerosene and yam-flour dealer, said though she had lost other children in the past, the loss of Afeez was inexplicable.

According to the middle-aged mother-of-four, simply identified as ‘Iya Luku,’ on the ill-fated day, her daughter, who had gone to sell kerosene to customers in the morning returned home with four unsold bottles which she left close-by.

“I left two half-filled bottles outside where I cooked and when their father, who had been out returned, he said the half-filled bottles should be properly kept. But before I could go and put them away, his sister had opened the two half-filled bottles for him.

“When I came out, I saw my son in a terrible condition. He was writhing in pain and I shouted for help. We tried to give him palm oil but it took some minutes to pass it into his mouth,” she explained.

Iya Luku said that while they were on their way to the clinic, the baby fainted intermittently and excreted severally while his tongue turned black instantly.

At the hospital, the baby was injected and vomited severally, but all efforts to resuscitate him proved abortive. He was declared dead minutes later.

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