Extraordinary footage emerges of divers rescuing a Nigerian man who survived almost three days trapped in an underwater shipwreck. Jillian Kitchener reports.
HE SURVIVED three days in a sunken tugboat but now Harrison Okene is being asked if he used black magic to survive as he vows never to go to sea again.
The 29-year-old has transformed his life since a diver fished him out of the sea: He never again wants to find himself in a boat galley, and has since started working as a cook on firm ground.
Mr Okene was the only survivor in a crew of 12 when the Jascon 4 capsized in May, and that still haunts him.
He stayed alive by breathing from an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket of the tugboat. A video of Mr Okene's rescue in May was posted on the internet more than six months later and has since gone viral.
When recounting the rescue at his local parish, even the priest asked him if he had used black magic to survive.
"I was so surprised! How could a man of God be saying this?'' Mr Okene said, his voice rising in disbelief.
Mr Okene said from his modest two-bedroom apartment in the southern oil industry center of Warri, that he didn't go to the funerals of his colleagues because he feared their families' reactions - Nigerians being generally very religious but also superstitious.
Never going back again ... Harrison Odjegba Okene looks in awe as a rescue diver surfaces into the air pocket where he survived for three days, after his tugboat sank. He has vowed to never return to sea.
"I couldn't go because I didn't know what the family will say, thinking 'Why is he the only one to survive,''' said Mr Okene.
His rescuers from the Dutch company DCN Diving, were looking only for bodies and already had recovered four corpses when they came upon Mr Okene.
The chubby-faced cook by that time had almost given up hope, but then he heard the sound of a boat, a hammering on the side of the vessel and then, after a while, saw lights and the rising waters around him bubbling.
He said he knew it had to be a diver, but he was on the wrong end of the cabin.
When the diver returned, Mr Okene had to swim through the dark waters to reach him and still he did not see him. "So I tapped him at the back of his neck, so he was afraid.'' When the diver saw his hand he said "corpse, corpse, a corpse,'' into his microphone, reporting up to the rescue vessel.
"When he brought his hand close to me, I pulled on his hand,'' Mr Okene said of the moment that finally made the truth clear to his rescuer. "He's alive! He's alive! He's alive!'' he diver shouted.
Still, the diver appeared to have a hard time believing he had survived, Mr Okene said.
On the video, there are expletives and exclamations of fear and shock from Mr Okene's rescuer, and then joy as the realisation set in: There was a survivor.
Until that moment, Mr Okene believed his colleagues must have escaped. The tug was one of three towing a Chevron oil tanker in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta waters, but on May 26 there was a sudden lurch and it keeled over.
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