Ebonyi Man Recounts How His Sister's Funeral Was Cancelled After Her Corpse Went Missing At The Morgue

 A distraught man has narrated how his sister's funeral ceremony was cancelled after her corpse went missing from the morgue. 

Pastor Fred Okoro in an interview with the PUNCH revealed how the body of his late sister, Madam Grace Okoro of Igbara village, Umunnato Edda community, Ebonyi State went missing from the mortuary it was deposited since December last year and still not found as at the time of the interview.

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According to Pastor Okoro, his 80-year old sister who died July2, 2021 had her corpse deposited at the mortuary that same pending the time the December 27 scheduled burial will take place but on the date of the burial, the corpse of another woman was presented to them.

In his words:

"Her death occurred at around 5am on July 2, 2021 at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. The corpse was deposited on the same day at the mortuary of the General Hospital, Owutu Edda in the Afikpo South Local Governmenr Area. The funeral was scheduled to hold on December 27 and 28 2021, a request granted by the elders, town union, and youths of Igbara town. Normally, funerals are not allowed in my home town during the festive periods of December and January. The request was granted as an honour to my sister, because of her kindness to people, corporation and pursuit of peace in the land, which was not hidden from the eyes of people of the town.

"Women of the town cancelled their August meeting of the year in honour of her. They said the meeting must not hold, while her body was in the mortuary.

"The wake lasted from the evening of Monday, December 27, 2021 to around 5am the following day, Tuesday, December 28, being the burial day. From around 9am, relations, in-laws, friends well-wishers, youths and elders of the town had started gathering at the venue of the burial ceremony.

"The ceremony was to start at 10am, but at 12 noon, both the ambulance bringing the corpse from the mortuary and relations and friends that went to the mortuary had not been sighted. There was apprehension everywhere when a relation drove in from the mortuary and asked me to come with him to the mortuary. On our way, he told me that I was needed to identify the corpse. That information put me off and I began to feel uneasy, wondering why even her first daughter who was living with her till the hour she died could not identify the corpse of her mother. As I got to the mortuary, I didn’t find it difficult to notice that the corpse that was cleverly packaged was not that of my sister due to one distinguishing feature of my late sister. She was about six feet tall. But the corpse presented to us was that of a short woman of about five feet tall. According to her first daughter, who was with her till she passed away, Madam Grace had plaited hair, whereas the corpse presented to us was with a low cut grey hair. My sister didn’t attend any church, yet the corpse was wearing a chaplet (the beads Catholics pray with).

"As the mortician, Mr Joe Nweke, noticed that we had discovered his tricks, he lied that his colleague, who was not on duty due to ill health, was the person that received the corpse and did the documentations on the day it was deposited."

He continued:

"A call was placed to his colleague, who, when he arrived, demanded the receipt to track the corpse. Unknown to us, Mr  Nweke had quickly hid the receipt that we presented, but he lied that he had given it to one of us. It took up to one hour’s search for the receipt in their office, before my niece forced her hand into the man’s side pocket, and pulled out the receipt wrapped inside a currency note, to the shock of all that were present.

He believed the mortician was culpable  with the stunts he tried to pull.

"The mortician’s intention was to deny that we deposited a corpse at the mortuary. It was at this point that the first daughter of the deceased narrated to us how each time she visited the mortuary to check on the corpse, the mortician would not grant her request, with an excuse that he had just fumigated the place with a very strong chemical. The same was the experience of other relations who went there on December 26 to deliver the casket, and the clothes to dress up the corpse. The mortician didn’t deny these reports.

"It took the presence of armed soldiers to prevent youths from my town from lynching the morticians and possibly razing down the mortuary. I thank God for that, as it would have degenerated into a case of “taking the law into your own hands.” We went to the police, who then arrested the mortician, and the clerk of the mortuary.

According to Pastor Okoro, the efforts of the Police to locate the missing corpse proved abortive as the corpse is still missing and his sister remained unburied.

He believed the mortician and his cohorts who he called 'co-evil people' were responsible for the missing corpse.

He noted that with the mannerism of the mortician, he's being economical with the truth.

He further appealed to the elders of the Igbara Edda community, the chiefs of the town and the governor of Ebonyi State to help unravel the mystery over the missing corpse.

Interview Copyright: PUNCH.

READ FULL INTERVIEW HERE