Ondo buries 496 unclaimed corpses

By Akintunde Jacobs, Akure

In order to decongest the morgues at the Akure and Ondo complexes of the State University of Medical Science Teaching Hospital (UNIMEDTH), the Ondo State Government has conducted a mass burial for 496 unclaimed corpses in the state.

The Special Adviser to the State Governor on Health, Dayo Faduyile, who made this known on Tuesday in a statement made available to journalists through the Head, Press Unit and Public Relations, Ministry of Health, Bisi Lawani, said the development became necessary after an assessment tour of morgues in the two hospitals in the state.

Faduyile stated that it was observed during the tour that hospitals were jam-packed with unclaimed bodies spanning a year and above and expressed dismay over the gory state of the morgue.

According to the Special Adviser, who said the development prompted him to put up a strong memo to the State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, on the urgent need to decongest and rehabilitate the morgues, which had literally turned into an eye-sore.

Faduyile said that the Governor did not hesitate to approve the memo to carry out the proposed mass burial activities, so as to avoid an imminent outbreak of epidemic diseases in the state.

Faduyile said as a professional pathologist, his office followed all due process by putting all necessary machinery in place for quality and hitch-free mass burial activities.

He said, “These include obtaining a mass burial permit from the Chief Magistrate of the Magistrate Court of Justice, Oke-Eda, Akure, securing a parcel of land at Odigbo Local Government, from the State Ministry of Lands and Housing for the mass burial, advertising the mass burial on the print and electronic media, giving a 21-day period to reclaim the unclaimed bodies, in compliance with the extant laws of the land.”

Others, according to Faduyile is the auditing of the unclaimed bodies in the morgues of Akure and Ondo UNIMEDTH complexes for record purposes and the certification of the unclaimed bodies to ascertain their individual causes of death.

Faduyile said, “In all, 87 bodies were identified/known with their name tags while 409 were unknown and a total of 496 bodies underwent mass burial.

“The 21-day ultimatum as publicised on prints and electronic media commenced on the 1st of August and lapsed on the 21st of August, 2022. Thereafter, preparations for the mass burial commenced.

“On Friday, September 2nd, 2022, the mass burial was carried out, with the protection of security operatives and a handful of pressmen. The bodies were buried in a deep grave of 10 by 10 feet wide, and 18 feet depth, at the allocated land by the State Government,” he said.