• Insurgency, high crime breed abandoned corpses

In Africa and most parts of the world, the dead are accorded respect by giving them proper burial. In some cultures, elaborate ceremonies are held to bury the elderly and aged.

Even the young are accorded dignifying burial rites. In Igbo culture for instance, the dead are hardly buried outside their ancestral domains. Even the changing global culture has not affected this practice among the Igbo. Other culture groups have peculiar ways of burying their dead otherwise, they would not believe the deceased’s spirit would have  rest. Leaving dead bodies unburied, or buried in manners inconsistent with the cultures of the people are unheard of.But today, strange ways of dying never anticipated in African cultures have set in and they stretch the traditions of according decent burial for the dead, even in Nigeria. Lately, the nation has been facing terror attacks that has pushed up the death rate. And most times, the remains of victims are mangled and burnt in a way that they are hardly recognised. That has also created a strange tradition of abandoning dead bodies in preservation facilities rather than according them decent burial. For few lucky victims, their bodies were recovered intact, while for others, only  some body parts make it to the grave. For instance when in October 2005, a Bellview airline crashed in Ijoko Ota, Ogun State right inside a forest with main body of the plane buried deep inside the earth, many bodies were not found and relatives of victims just went to the site and picked the earth in lieu of bodies, took them home in caskets and buried. Yet, for others, their remains were disposed off in body bags.
While Nigerian families count losses of their loved ones killed during bomb attacks, managers of government mortuaries are licking their wounds. In Abuja for instance, the recent bomb blasts have led to a significant increase in the number of unclaimed corpses in government mortuaries.
The April 14 blast that rocked Nyanya, a suburb of the nation’s capital killed over 120 people. Out of this number, family members have recovered the corpses of many of them. However, more are yet to get proper burial by family members who have not been able to identify or claim the remaining corpses.
The second bomb blast that rocked almost the same spot in Nyanya barely a week after the first one equally left about 21 people dead. Again, public morgues were littered with dead bodies. Likewise, family members have identified and claimed some of the dead bodies, while several others are yet to be buried.
The last Emab Mall blast in Wuse II raised the number of unclaimed corpses in government mortuaries. According to the General Manager of the FCT Hospital Management Board, Dr Aminu Mai, five non-mutilated bomb blast corpses are yet to be identified by family members in the Nyanya General Hospital. Wuse Hospital has seven corpses yet to be recovered. The spokesperson of the National Hospital, Dr Tope Hastrup told Abuja Metro that two bomb blast corpses are still lying in the hospital’s morgue.
Meanwhile, some mutilated body parts from the three recent bomb blasts in Abuja are still in body bags in the mentioned government mortuaries. Dr. Mai told Abuja Metro that the law does not empower them to give the mutilated bodies mass burial just because they cannot be identified by family members. He said this is a serious challenge to the management of the hospitals in the nation’s capital.
Big problem
“We have a serious challenge at hand in managing the mortuaries in the territory since the bombing incidents. We have released corpses that have been identified by family members, while there are several others yet to be taken.
The other issue is the case of body parts that that cannot be identified. They are body bags in the mortuaries in the city and we do not have the right to mass burial. Only the police and Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) can do that. As at now, these mutilated body parts are still there in various mortuaries,” Dr Mai revealed.
Making things worse
There is a bigger challenge on their hands. According to Dr Mai, police and the Department of State Security (DSS) have corpses in the same facilities. Some of those corpses deposited by the government security agencies are from dead suspects in crime. He said this has become common occurrence and expressed frustration over their inability to manage the situation effectively.
He made specific reference to the remains of suspects that died in the DSS facility during a foiled jailbreak. Up till now, nothing has been done to remove the bodies for burial to reduce the pressure on mortuaries in the territories.
He said: “In some instances, police officers have even beaten our staffers in the course of depositing dead bodies in our facilities. Very often, they would just drive into our hospitals, drop the bodies and go away. Whenever they are approached by our staff, they would attack them. There have been instances when our staffers were beaten up by policemen for asking questions.
Build your mortuaries
He said further: “We have raised the issue and even advised the police and security bodies to build their mortuaries to accommodate more dead bodies they bring into the hospitals. They only reply that they do not have adequate fund to do that. Sadly, when they drop these corpses, they do not even bother how they would be buried. It is a big challenge.
“DSS does that sometimes. They also bring in corpses of dead suspects. Right now, our facilities are over-stretched and something needs to be done about this urgently.”
Right now, only Lagos State has enacted cremation law. FCT and other states are yet to come up with such law as a way of checking incidences of unclaimed corpses in public mortuaries. More so, the process of securing court and police approval before mass burials are conducted appears to be cumbersome. So for now, management of government facilities for preserving dead bodies have to find a way to manage the menace.

Abuja and scourge of dead bodies