Punch reports:
Everything was set for
the burial of 55-year-old Mrs. Ayoka Buhari, who had died after a brief
illness, in the Mowe area of Ogun State.
The wake had held, the
burial ground had been prepared as friends and bereaved family members gathered
for her interment in the family compound on Thursday.
But as the family
approached the management of the TOS Funerals, which manages a morgue in the
Gbagada General Hospital, for the corpse around 8am, the body could not be
found.
Punch Metro learnt that the corpse had been mistakenly swapped for
another.
A relative, Folorunsho
Adeoluwa, expressed sadness over the incident, threatening legal action against
the owners of the morgue.
Adeoluwa said the mother
of four had died on Wednesday, October 14, and was taken to the morgue.
He said, “The family
was asked to come for the corpse at 8.30am today (Thursday), but when we got
there, we discovered that they were not ready for us. Later, they said the
woman’s husband must show up before they release her corpse.
“Her daughter, however,
insisted on seeing the corpse. They brought out a corpse and she raised the
alarm that it was not her mother.”
Our correspondent was
told that after much enquiries, a worker in the morgue, identified as Femi,
explained that there was a problem of mistaken identity.
He was said to have
told the family that the corpse was wrongly tagged and given to another man,
who lost his wife.
Punch Metro gathered that the deceased’s husband and a few family
members rushed down to Matori, Mushin, to meet the man who was suspected to
have taken the corpse.
It was learnt that on
getting to the place, the family discovered that the corpse had been buried.
“The man said he had
buried his wife and he could not exhume her body unless the family showed him
the picture of the corpse they have in the mortuary.
“We all rushed back to
the morgue and took a picture of the corpse that the hospital wanted to give
us. The woman’s husband has not returned from the place,” Adeoluwa added.
Punch Metro was told around 4pm that the first family had
identified the photo of the corpse as theirs, but it had not been established
if the buried one was that of Mrs. Buhari.
A relative, Deborah
Ogunfowora, berated morgue managers for being “careless.”
She added that the
family had paid all the money for the one week the deceased stayed in the
facility.
She said, “They don’t
know their jobs. They are just making excuses. They said the two corpses were
brought in at the same time and the mistake happened when they were tagging
them.
“Right now I have been
getting calls from those at home to know what is going on and I can’t pick
their calls. Everybody is apprehensive.”
The spokesperson for
the morgue, identified simply as Olumide, said the corpse had been found and
the family was going for the burial around 7pm.
“There was just a mix
up, which has been sorted out. I am with the family; they are driving ahead of
me. We are on our way to bury the corpse. The matter has been resolved,” he
said.
- Punch
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