Federal Medical Centre plans mass burial for unclaimed corpses

The Management of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Yenagoa said on Monday that it planned to carry out mass burial for the unclaimed corpses in its mortuary.

Dr Dennis Allagoa, the Chief Medical Director, stated this in Yenagoa in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He said that pathologists in the hospital were in the process of counting and sorting the corpses that had over stayed.

Allagoa said that many of the corpses had been abandoned for over 10 years.

"We issued a 21-day public notice because we noticed that corpses have littered the entire mortuary and there is no space to take in new corpses.

"As the decay goes on in the mortuary, the corpses have become a threat to human life because chemical and biochemical effects are ongoing.

"So, we want to clean up the area so that people can enjoy the benefit of a good site and space to bring in their corpses."

He said that most of the unclaimed corpses were deposited by security personnel while others were found on the road and the rivers and brought to the mortuary.

"A lot of them are corpses that were deposited by the security operatives. Most of them are just bones, legs and they are not actually full bodies.

"They brought in people that died on the road and from the rivers.’’People that died due to issues of militancy, they brought them in their mass and they kept them at the morgue."

Allagoa, however, stated that the mass burial would follow due process, adding that it would be transparent.

He added that relevant stakeholders, such as the police, officials of the ministry of the environment, the judiciary among others had been notified of the planned mass burial.