Filth, stench, bribery and corruption at Nigerian mortuaries and cemeteries

No insecticide, air freshener at Ogun General Hospital  This world is not my home I’m just a-passing through My treasures are laid up Somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me From heaven’s open door And I can’t feel at home In this world anymore. It’s not just the opening two stanzas of Jim Reeves’ […]

No insecticide, air freshener at Ogun General Hospital

 This world is not my home

I’m just a-passing through

My treasures are laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me

From heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home

In this world anymore.

It’s not just the opening two stanzas of Jim Reeves’ This World Is Not My Own, it’s the ring tone of the lead mortuary attendant at the State Hospital on Sokenu Road, Ijaye Abeokuta, owned and run by the Ogun State government. A calm, measured, simply-dressed man, he wears the aura of a man who understands, by virtue of his work, that life is vanity. He is one who takes his work seriously, too: he picks up the phone, studies the screen, and silences it. Moments later, the phone rings again. Again, the attendant retrieves it — a black Tecno product — from the window and silences it. It’s not time to talk. Instead, he opts to attend to a visitor seeking to know the costs of depositing a fresh corpse at the morgue.

“You’ll obtain a card for N500, and pay N20,000 for the first seven days. After the first seven days, it’s N500/day,” he says.

 Asked if that is all, he adds: “No. You will buy a bottle of insecticide and another of air freshener.”

 The conversation is interrupted by the caller; and as he answers this time, his colleague fishes out a Raid Insecticide and a Wind air as proof of the practice.

 Asked to see where the corpse would be deposited, he doesn’t hide his shock. “You mean you want to see our office?” he queries, before beckoning his colleague to open the morgue.

Ogun General Hospital morgue is in a shambles

 His colleague opens a room. In it are four dead bodies — two apiece for both sexes — all in pans placed on a slab. This is where fresh corpses are received, and they are there for five days. The first corpse, a woman’s, is naked, her trunk bearing some whitish substance that went unexplained. It is a heart-wrenching sight the woman’s family would surely not want to behold. 

“This one was brought here just yesterday,” the second attendant says. “As you can see, the formalin is still active.

 For the records, this is the 10th year since the European Union banned the use of formaldehyde (an organic compound from which formalin is derived) as a biocide, including in embalming, due to its carcinogenic properties.

 The main room where the corpses are then transferred to after five days does not itself offer any form of relief to the grieving. The walls are paling, the floor bear spots of stagnant water, the air is thick with stench and the room is generally mangy. Some corpses lie bare on planks — clear evidence that the traditional corpse pans were in limited supply.

The mortuary attendant who hates his ‘office’ 

At the Federal Medical Centre, Idi-Aba, Abeokuta, also in Ogun State,the mortuary attendant is averse to the idea of entering the morgue — same place his colleague at State Hospital, Ijaye, had proudly described as “our office”. Neither does he want the visitor to enter.

Instructed by his boss to open the morgue — after the visitor had hinted he would take his corpse elsewhere if he wasn’t allowed to have prior look at the morgue — he protested. “But you’re already in the mortuary,” he grumbled. “What else do you want to see?”

Reluctantly, he leads the visitor down a passage by the right, bypassing a few rooms before finally stopping by one on the far left. He unlocks the door and steps backwards, signalling the visitor to enter with a you-said-you-want-to-see-now-you’re-here, look. Even he wants to go nowhere close.

 The room is clean, frankly. The corpses are all dressed to the teeth, making it impossible to tell the males from the females. It appears, though, that there is an attempt to distinguish the old corpses from the fresh: the ones close to the door are robed in deep green while the ones further away are in light, leafy green. The bodies are all placed on planks, neatly so. As far as sight is concerned, there is nothing starkly offensive to behold.

 Unlike other morgues, there is no stench to deal with — although the smell can’t entirely be said to be pleasant. But also unlike other morgues, there is a strange, fast-gathering peppering of the eyes. Without a smidgen of doubt, the room has been sprayed with a chemical so strong that it attacks the eyes. No human with naked eyes can survive five minutes inside that morgue without letting out involuntary tears. The journalist doesn’t last two minutes before he asks to leave. With the benefit of hindsight, this is the exact reason the attendant was hesitant to enter. 

 Cleaners of the dead are fooling around with death

 What must have happened in that room is that a derivative of formaldehyde — formalin the usual suspect — was generously applied to the air to retain the dryness of the corpses. As the corpses were not warehoused in a cold room, there was always the risk of decomposition. The generous use of formaldehyde was to counter this possibility, but it comes along with its own calamity.

 Formaldehyde is not only toxic, it is volatile and poses significant danger to human health. In 2011, the US National Toxicology Program branded it a “human carcinogen”. In any case, that designation ought to have come four long years earlier, but for the fightback of the manufacturing industry.

 Also, a research published in the US in 2015 linked Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, with constant exposure of mortuary workers to the formaldehyde in embalming fluid. The research team estimated people’s on-the-job exposure to formaldehyde, using criteria developed by the US National Cancer Institute. They then used death records to track deaths caused by ALS. Their finding was that men with a high probability of formaldehyde exposure were about three times as likely to die of ALS as those who had never been exposed to the chemical.

 As described by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH),ALS is a “progressive and ultimately fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling muscles”. It has no cure yet.

 Sango Cemetery is overcrowded

 “If you really value your dead one, don’t try to bury him at Sango Cemetery,” goes the warning from Babatunde Akanji, who has lived all his life in Ibadan and has heard many tales of the uprooting of corpses and double burial of corpses in single vaults. 

 “That cemetery is filled up but their people will never tell you. You’ll just go back after five or 10 years and your corpse would be gone, either because it has been uprooted or because another corpse has been interred directly on top of it.”

 Therefore, the visit to the government-owned Sango Cemetery, located in Ibadan, capital of Oyo State, is to verify the claims of a space constraint — although it is hard not to notice the appallingly weedy graveyard and the stagnant, potentially-hazardous water in the gutters. The cemetery “marketer on duty” — a bald, elderly man with wobbly legs and a slim frame— vehemently denies that there is a lack of space.

 “Do you have time?” he says when told that other cemeteries will be considered for the impending interment unless the available space here is seen. “Let’s go!”

The cemetery marketer, journalist and a third party exit the cemetery gate to the roadside and walk in the Sango-UI direction. After some 500metres on foot, Baba Onigi, as he would later introduce himself, slides left to enter the cemetery through an unfenced pathway. Bizarrely, a woman is selling pepper and vegetables less than 100metres away from the first noticeable tombstone. There’s an uncompleted building in that territory, in fact, and people are cohabiting in it. A refuse dump is also in the zone.

 Baba Onigi points vaguely at a spot where land is supposedly available. But there is nothing visible other than some irregularly-positioned tombs, a stretch of land covered by overgrown weeds, plus unmarked heaps of sand — clear evidence that some digging had previously taken place. It becomes clear that there is truly no space, and any corpse buried there would either be uprooted someday or find itself in some unsolicited company.

 In Abeokuta, humans and the dead are cohabiting — literally

 From the first floor of her house at Iyana Mortuary (meaning ‘the turning by mortuary’) in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Busola Orabiyi can see the nearby graveyard, owned and managed by the Cathedral of St. James African Church, Idi-Ape. The fencing is that low! 

 It is never a pleasant sight for her but she can cope in the daytime. At night, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member never opens her doors or windows even in times of power outage — ever since she was rewarded with a nightmare for opening her windows to let in fresh air. 

“When I moved in, I didn’t really like the idea of living by a mortuary but I was pressed for house so I thought I was only going to be walking past it,” she says. 

 “But I was wrong! There was power outage one day and you couldn’t possibly imagine my shock when I opened my window only to be confronted by the sight of dozens of whitish tombstones. I could not sleep for all of that night. It was nightmarish.

 “Since then, my windows are always locked even in periods of power cut. The good news is that I’m here for just one year — that is if I stay long enough.”

 Although the tombs were markedly overgrown by weeds, subsequent visits to other states showed that this was one of the better-looking non-private cemeteries in Ogun, Lagos and Oyo States.

 Atan Cemetery may soon be rechristened Atan Forest

 Atan Cemetery, situated in Yaba, an eastern suburb of Lagos, is one of Nigeria’s oldest cemeteries — so old that no one alive or their progenitors was around when it was sited. But Atan, founded in 1868 on a 25-hectare piece of land at Yaba Local Government Area, is the perfect example of how not to run a cemetery.

The welcome to Atan is unpleasant. The first few opening rows of graves on the left are piles of refuse that would surely sicken the spirits of the dead. Where there are no waste paper and dried leaves, there are overgrown graves. In fact, there is a certain grave that has been overtaken by shrubs. Without the tombstones, the cemetery would easily pass for a forest.

According to one of the casual workers at the site, the cemetery is in such state because the fees for general and personal maintenance are separate.

“What government does is general maintenance,” he says.“The government will then decide where to maintain, and you may be unlucky that the maintained portion is not yours. But when you pay for personal maintenance, N3,500 per month, only your portion will be maintained.”

Same thoughts were expressed by the local government official conducting prospective clients round the facility. 

“We will soon start clearing the bush. Tomorrow, I will use my car to go fetch the labourers who will clear the grass,” says Samuel, as he would later identify himself.

Asked why the cemetery was bushy in the first place, with government pocketing 60 percent of all payments, he says: “If you want your personal space to be clean, you can employ the boys to do it for you. Just look for one boy, give him N2,000 every month and the place will be so neat you won’t find a single dirt there.”

Temporary — call it interrupted — rest

Although the cheapest single-space vault costs N250,000, Samuel says a temporary space can be leased for N200,000. So what’s the difference between a permanent and temporary vaults? 

“In temporary, no document, no anything!” Samuel explains.“You may come back to make it permanent but this has to be done within one month.”

What then happens if the deceased’s family does not return within a month?Samuel manages to evade the question. It didn’t matter in the end; a visitor to the cemetery first answered it 11 years ago before revalidating his answer last year. 

After first visiting Atan in 2006, Waju Abraham wrote: In 2006, my friend, another only son lost his mother and I was his chief consoler… By the time we got to the burial spot, the grave had not been dug. Someone pulled ‘strings’ and things rolled into action. As they dug, I shuddered. The loose, soft earth was proof it was very fertile, but it revealed something else.

“Clumps of earth sprinkled with human bones hit the ground around us. Alas, it was someone else’s grave. Another tenant being evicted for not paying rent. My friend was disconsolate. I held him. Then after digging knee deep, they stopped and said ‘Oya, bring am!’ They were ready to bury and close up the earths mouth.

“This is not 6 feet!” my friend wailed. 

 “Oga, six feet Na length, no be depth!”

 I remember getting home that night, and telling my diary (there was no Facebook then, or mobile internet) that when I retired to heaven, I’d like to be cremated. I’d like the ashes spread over places I’ve lived and loved. No! Don’t keep me in a sealed, airtight jar on the mantelpiece. Let me soar with the wind, and run with the rivulets that form when the rain falls on a typical summers day.

 When he returned again to Atan in 2016, he was welcomed by further shock. Of the latter experience, he wrote: Atan must not be part of Lagos, because apparently Atan ti baje mehn. I saw at least three human skulls, one tibia, one badly chewed femur. Chai! I saw the Tommy boxer shorts that they buried somebody in. I saw what looked like the leathered torso of a corpse that was tired of stinking.

 And to make things even worse, the guys who had to cover the grave demanded a tip -or else. The earth was still soft beneath my feet. Dark, languid, as if to say ‘Oga, I dey wait for you. To which I replied ‘Yofada! No be now!’ I didn’t shed a single tear. I was too bone-jarred to care. Someone needs to do something about Atan cemetery.

Burial through the backdoor

One of the casual workers at the cemetery says no one needs to spend as much as N250,000 to bury a loved one. He leaves his phone number with the visitor, saying the finer details can be strung together on phone.

“Make everything N200,000,” he says to kick-start the haggling over a temporary space for the dead.

“No, no,” he is told. “If Samuel said I could get a temporary space for N200,000, why should I give you the same amount. Let’s have a deal for N80,000.”

After some more minutes of haggling on the phone, the two parties settle for N100,000. Nice deal it seems on the surface, but corpses buried in this manner end up like the “three human skulls, one tibia and one badly chewed femur” that assaulted Abraham’s sight.

Beauty and the beast

It is impossible for any living creature to visit Vaults and Gardens,Ikoyi, owned by Bola Tinubu, two-time former governor of Lagos, without entertaining a deferred longing to die. That is surely over the top, but it’s a place you visit and you go, “When I die, this is the kind of place I want to be buried in”.

The entryway is heavenly. Both sides are green, so luxuriant that one wonders if they have the powers to breathe life into the dead. The clay bricks supporting the vegetation shine with an iridescent sheen. To the right is a well-trimmed garden with primly-arranged chairs — better to mourn in a cozy zone than in the scorching sun, the developers must have thought. 

And to the left, once inside the gate, is the section for high-density vaults. The vaults are uniformly laid and thinly but evenly spaced for easy passage, some even intertwining with the garden. The planning is delicate— far more detailed than Nasir El-Rufai’s famed redesigning of the Federal Capital Territory. Simply put, the entire scenery is scintillating, able to lessen or even ridicule the ruthlessness of death.

Meanwhile, just over the fence of Vault and Gardens is the government-owned, run-down Ikoyi Cemetery. You are welcome by two disgusting sights: a cock crowing on someone’s grave, and a man — obviously no wiser than the cock — bathing on another. It’s about 5pm on a Sunday evening. The bathing man conceals his crotch in a hand, and with the other he motions at a colleague to answer the visitor’s enquiries.

As usual with all other public cemeteries visited, Ikoyi Cemetery is overgrown. The vaults are so closely dug in a manner reminiscent of sitting patterns in the obsolete Molue buses. There are a few tombstones that are no longer visible to the eyes because they have been overtaken by shrubs, and there are others being overshadowed by trees.

Ordinarily, Ikoyi Cemetery should be a national monument of sorts; in there lie the remains of some notable Nigerians: Herbert Macaulay, politician, engineer, architect, journalist, and musician, considered by many Nigerians as the founder of Nigerian nationalism; Henry Carr, educator and administrator, one of the most prominent West Africans in the late 19th and early 20th century, member of the legislative council in Lagos from 1918 to 1924; Candido Joao Da Rocha, businessman, landowner and creditor who owned Water House on Kakawa Street, Lagos Island, proprietor of the now defunct Bonanza Hotel in Lagos; Orlando Martins, pioneer film and stage actor, one of England’s most prominent and leading black actors of the 1940s.

Segregation in death: the rich and the poor so close yet so far

Aside from the country’s well-documented mean maintenance of public infrastructure, it is easy to see why Ikoyi Cemetery and Vaults and Gardens are miles apart although separated by just a fence: the least expensive single vault at Vaults and Gardens costs N3.2million — 10 times the cost of Ikoyi Cemetery’s most expensive single vault!

At the 11-year-old Vaults and Gardens, resting places are palatial in nature. The alleys are named after individuals, exactly as streets are named. Just as there is Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue or Kofo Abayomi Street on Victoria island, there is also Modupe Christine Adepoju Alley or Olufunke Funmilayo Alley at the cemetery.

Eskor Mfon, first pastor of City of David, who died in 2007, is resting in a specially-made spacious garden now worth N200million.There is someone else — unnamed by the cemetery manager — who has custom-made the vault where he wants to be buried whenever he dies. It’s worth N150million; the fellow is still alive at the moment.

The remains of Tayo Aderinokun, who, until his death at 56 in 2011, was chief executive officer of Guaranty Trust Bank, are at a mansion-like space worth N170million.

Ade Adefuye— professor and ambassador extraordinaire — who died in 2015 aged 68, is resting in a medium-density, self-gated and fenced home in the cemetery. Molade Okoya Thomas, founder of Eleganza Group, and his wife Olivet Abosede, who died exactly a month after his first remembrance, also have customised eternal abodes. For all three, their graves cost close to N200m each. The Fasholas and Tinubus have their own family spaces as well.

The ugliness of death in Nigeria

 The Yoruba have an adage that there is honour in death. It is an age long axiom that must have been formulated in an era that took no cognizance of the impact of public health facilities on the extent of honour available to the dead. For the rich, there is a chance: that honour exists in abundance at private cemeteries such as Vaults and Gardens. But such guarantees do not exist at the mortuary, particularly with reckless attendants like the one at UCH still around.

For the poor, there is no smidgen of honour in death. Just as it is with life, death is unkind to the poor man in this clime. At the mortuary and at the cemetery, the poor man’s suffering continues — unless governments, at all tiers, decide to surprise all of us by saying enough is enough.

This feature was sponsored by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism