Why We Are Still Holding Corpses Of Abuja Blast Victims – National Hospital

The management of National Hospital, Abuja, where some victims and corpses of last Monday bomb blast were taken to, said it had only released three of the 15 corpses that were deposited at the hospital’s morgue because of the medical processes involved in case government decides to compensate the relations of the deceased.

Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee of the hospital, Dr. Tony Okam, told Vanguard shortly after the Deputy Senate President visited the hospital to sympathize with the injured, weekend, that the hospital decided to follow all necessary due processes and documentation before releasing the corpses.
Okam, who explained that part of the processes included forensic reports by pathologist, noted that the measure would facilitate identification of relations of the dead in an event government decides to compensate them.
According to him, “the problem we had was that when government wanted to pay compensation on the immigration saga, there was the issue of relations coming to claim the corpses.
“We now said that the forensic pathologists have to come and identify the casualties but you know religion came into play as some Muslims will like to bury their loved ones.
“We now asked what we should do under the circumstance, and we agreed that we should prepare a letter of undertaking, which the family (of the deceased) will have to sign as well as the police.
“Under that circumstance, we will let go but ideally, we agreed with the forensic pathologists and the police that there must be autopsy report but what do we do in a situation whereby the relations of the deceased want to bury the dead immediately according to their religious belief.
“It was not easy trying to achieve what we can do and we made it clear to them that they have to sign it and the police also have to sign. So we have been able to release three corpses.
“We had 14 (corpses). Remember if government decides to pay compensation now many people will come and say I am the relation, we had an issue with that just recently.”