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From Stanley Uzoaru, Owerri
The Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Owerri, Imo State is set to conduct a mass burial of unclaimed corpses in the hospital’s morgue next month.
A press release on Wednesday by the the medical institution’s spokeswoman, Jacynta Achonu, also urged residents of the state whose relatives are missing to search for them in the FMC mortuary department in the next two weeks.
Speaking to our correspondent, Achonu explained that the hospital’s management has decided to bury corpses which have remained unclaimed for over three years.
Although Achonu did not disclose the figure of the corpses, she noted that there are still spaces in their morgue that can contain fresh corpses.
‘Not that we do not have spaces again in our mortuary,’ she said, ‘we just want to decongest the place so that we can accommodate new ones.
‘Sometimes this delay of carrying corpses so late is part of our culture here. We allow corpses to stay for long while building houses in preparation for funeral ceremony,’ Achonu explained.
The FMC spokeswoman, however, dismissed claims that the unclaimed corpses are among corpses allegedly forced into the morgue by security agencies.
‘We have been doing this for several years. We even did it last year; I don’t know why this year should be different. Some of your people asked us if we had corpses deposited by security agents and we told them no, and they saw for themselves,’ Achonu assured.
