For Adekunle Gold, the sky is almost a second home. Few people in Nigerian music travel as often as the Afrobeats star, and few know better how a body can turn against its owner at altitude. In a recent conversation with BBC Radio 1Xtra, the singer, whose real name is Adekunle Kosoko, described a flight that became one of the most frightening moments of his life with sickle cell.
The episode happened on his way to Tanzania, with a layover scheduled in Ethiopia. He was clear that it was not the crisis he has spoken about before, the one from when he was 20. This was a more recent one.
“The last major crisis I had happened on a plane,” he said.
It began quietly, as a cramp in his stomach. Adekunle Gold assumed the culprit was something he had eaten at the airport and recalled scolding himself for the choice.
“I was beating myself up about that, but it kept going,” he said.
The pain did not ease, and it soon became too severe to ignore. He went to the toilet, but nothing came. By his account, things got so bad that the crew nearly put the aircraft down because of him.
When the plane finally reached Ethiopia, the singer could no longer walk. For the first time in his life, he said, he had to be put in a wheelchair and taken to hospital. There, a doctor delivered the diagnosis: he was in the middle of a sickle cell crisis.
The diagnosis surprised him, because the crises he had known before were of a different kind.
“The only crisis I have known in my life is in my stomach,” he said, adding that it was the first time he had heard of the condition showing up this way.
The Doctor’s Advice
The doctor traced the episode to oxygen and hydration. His oxygen level had dropped, and the cause, he was told, was that he had not drunk enough water that day. The advice was simple: on any flight, drink plenty of water.
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Adekunle Gold repeated that the situation had been so serious the plane was nearly diverted on his account, as though the thought still amazed him.
His schedule makes the warning hard to ignore.
“I feel like I live on the plane, I’m on the plane 24/7,” he said. He pointed to what anyone close to someone with sickle cell will recognise: the condition revolves around oxygen. Up in the air, he said, that reality becomes “crazy.”
His account is a reminder that managing a chronic condition does not pause for a tour calendar or an international career. For a performer whose work keeps him moving between cities and countries, something as ordinary as a glass of water can matter a great deal.
Adekunle Gold has spoken openly about living with the genetic blood disorder, and this latest recollection adds to that candour, showing what a crisis can look like and why small precautions matter for people living with sickle cell, especially when they travel.