Eight months after Bamise Ayanwola was killed in the BRT bus by a wicked driver, her family has cried out to the state government to wade in on the demand by the Mainland Hospital mortuary for the family to pay N500,000 for preserving her corpse.
Bamise was killed by the driver of the BRT, Nice Omininikoron on the night of February 26. He has since been arrested and charged to court.
Speaking to the Punch the deceased’s elder brother, Pelumi, who spoke to our correspondent on Tuesday, said the money was the cost of keeping the deceased in the morgue.
The family said the death of their daughter is already a great loss to them and still wonder why they will now be made to pay for her morgue bill.
They said the state government should take up the bill and pay for the burial of the deceased since she was killed while on a state-owned bus.
Pelumi said, “The head of the mortuary attendants at the Mainland Hospital, Yaba, called my elder brother, Oluwatobi, to inform him that nobody had been coming to check on her corpse and nobody had paid anything after the autopsy was carried out.
“The person said the bills were accumulating and demanded that we come. My brother asked if we were the ones they should be calling for that. My brother later went to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, to verify why they said we should be paying when we were not the one that brought her corpse to that place.
“At Panti, we were told that after the autopsy was carried out, the responsibility was on us and that it was no longer under their care and that our family was to be paying the bill. My brother went to the mortuary to collect the bill and the amount as of two weeks ago was N499,200. But the money is over N500,000 now.
“As a family, aside from the justice that we have been clamouring for, we believe that the circumstances that led to her death shows that she fought hard and the situation exposed darkness in the Lagos Bus Services Limited and some governmental set-ups.
“So, we believe she died a hero and we want her to be buried as such. We want her to be given a state burial and immortalised.
“The LBSL is still operating, but as a family, we are still crying every day. Nothing has stopped their operation since the incident happened about eight months ago. Since the incident, we have not heard anything from LBSL; no official visit to our house by any representatives,” Pelumi stated.
Reacting, the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, said the transport company would settle the mortuary bills and take care of the burial expenses.
“I have spoken with the Managing Director of the LBSL, and he continues to sympathise with the family and he says that he will not expect them to look for that kind of money to pay,” Omotosho said.
