By Ayodele Oni
The Ondo State Government is set to decongest public morgues with approval of a mass burial to unclaimed corpses numbering 402.
Report revealed that some of the corpses have been abandoned since year 2020, with nobody coming forward to claim them.
The dead bodies are dumped at the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital (UNIMEDTH), morgue, in Akure and Ondo complexes, leaving no room to deposit fresh ones.
The State Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa has given approval for the immediate mass burial of the 402 known and unknown corpses deposited between 2020 and 2024, to prevent unwarranted hazardous tendencies the development portends for the people of the state.
According to a statement signed by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Health, Michael Odimayo, subtitled; “List of unknown and abandoned bodies in UNIMEDTH Ondo and Akure complexes”, said the governor “has approved the mass burial of prolonged abandoned corpses” in the two hospitals.
Due to the concluded plan on the mass burial, government has called on members of the public to claim the corpses of their loved ones before the expiration of the 21-day ultimatum given for the purpose.
It reads; “The office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Health has completed arrangement to effect the mass burial.
“The general public is therefore given up to 21 days from the day of this notice to go with evidence and claim the corpses of their relatives/ loved ones before the proposed mass burial.”
According to the statement, there are a total of 146 abandoned female corpses while that of male were 256.
Out of the 145 female corpses, there are 117 corpses, whose owners could not be traced, while only 29 corpses of the total figure could be identified.
For the male, out of the 256 corpses, 205 are unknown while 51 could be identified.
The number of unknown corpses both for male and female stands at 322 while the total for known corpses stands at 80.
From the above analyses, the total abandoned and unknown corpses expected to be given mass burial by the Ondo State government remains 402.
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