Nyanya bomb blast: Why we’ve not released 12 corpses —Hospital mgt

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.”