As well as my brother’s story, the special unmerited grace of God had also been upon me and upon the people He had used to help me. 

I was involved in a terrible road traffic accident in June 1982.  I was told I had been in a coma; and that I briefly regained consciousness but then relapsed into a coma again.  When I fully recovered from coma, my father told me what had happened and what he had been told by the police and hospital staff. 

He said I had been involved in a terrible road traffic accident involving two vehicles; one of which I had been travelling in.  My father also told me that six people had been, reportedly, certified and recorded dead at the scene of the accident by the police and that the six dead bodies were taken to a mortuary at a nearby hospital after medical staff had also confirmed the six people had died. 

According to ‘papa’ as my extended family preferred to call our father, a police officer told him that, just as the police officers who dealt with the accident and staff at the local hospital were preparing the six dead bodies to be put into the deep freezer containers at the mortuary, one officer said he had heard a breathing noise from one of the supposedly dead people. Therefore, they decided to double check the six dead bodies. 

My father also told me he was informed that when the police and hospital staff checked the six dead bodies again, they found that one of them was, in their own words, “just breathing again”. Five bodies were then put in the deep freezer containers and the one that was “just breathing again” was taken from the mortuary unit to the intensive care unit for treatment.  I was that one! 

I sustained multiple severe internal and external injuries and was in a coma for some time. I wasn’t a child at the time.  I had completed my first university degree then and had been working.  However, after receiving treatment, I had to relearn how to sit up, then how to stand up, and then how to walk again.  With time, I eventually started walking again without any aid or adaptation.

I did not recall how the terrible accident had happened.  I still don’t know what exactly happened but X-rays, photographs, and doctors’ reports show how serious things had been.  

I had been travelling in a car together with other people.  I was travelling to collect documentation to commence my Master’s degree programme at the London School of Economics (LSE) in England. My father sent the doctors’ reports to the LSE and they kindly postponed my application and I joined the Master’s degree programme the following year –in 1983.

I remembered entering into the car and also remembered aspects of the journey before the accident.  Then I woke up one day at a hospital and was told afterwards when I could understand things again, that I had been in a coma.

I still walk with a mild limp and occasionally experience some pain in my left leg which is still slightly shorter than my right leg as a result of the injuries I sustained in that accident.  Nonetheless, it was a great miracle that I survived. I am grateful to God that I started breathing again at the mortuary just as the six bodies that had been certified dead were about to be put into the deep freezer containers. I am also grateful to the professionals who built upon the work that had been done at the spiritual level and who then did their bits physically to help me live.

It is equally an extraordinary miracle that I had been able to live a normal and sweet life since the accident even though I had sustained multiple serious internal and external injuries including multiple fractures of the left leg and a base fracture of the skull, as well as other severe injuries. I had been privileged and pleased to share this wonderful testimony with an attitude of gratitude at various events. 

People who challenge the miracles set out in the previous passages could say a doctor had made a mistake and that the incidents were not miracles. Realistically speaking, they could put forward such a baseless argument only if one doctor had certified someone as dead.  In the case of my younger brother in Amsterdam, three professionally qualified and competent doctors in one of the largest hospitals in Holland had each medically certified him dead.

Many people were also reportedly involved in my case.  Furthermore, there were traffic police officers and hospital staff at the mortuary, but only one person heard my breathing noise. If that one person had not heard my breathing noise, I would have been put in the deep freezer containers together with the other five bodies that were put in the containers.

God can send just one person to your valley of life and use that person to make a big positive difference in your life. 

There are times when it is just one person you need to help you get out of your storms of life just as only one letter of the alphabet makes the big positive difference between ‘hell’ and ‘hello’. 

To the whole world you are one person, but to one person you could be the whole world.  You might just be the ‘O’ that someone needs at an appointed time to turn their ‘hell’ into ‘hello’ in the valley of life. 

Recall the story I had just told you.  Six certified dead bodies were being prepared at a mortuary unit to be put in the deep freezer containers.  There were various people at the place at the time but only one person said they heard a breathing noise which then led to me being removed from the mortuary unit and taken to the intensive care unit.  Just one person made the positive difference for me!

God uses and sends us other people that can help everyone get out of their own valleys of life.  Therefore, let’s reach out to each other and be of help to each other as we all need God and other God-directed people to make it in life and successfully get out of our respective valleys of life.

God bless.

Dr Innocent Izamoje