Saving Nigeria’s cemeteries
The Nyanya cemetery is now a public toilet. At the beginning it was certainly conceived of as a cemetery which would serve the Muslim inhabitants in the immediate community. There is also a Christian cemetery which shares a fence with the Muslim one. Both have become public toilets. The fate of one, has become the […]
The Nyanya cemetery is now a public toilet. At the beginning it was certainly conceived of as a cemetery which would serve the Muslim inhabitants in the immediate community. There is also a Christian cemetery which shares a fence with the Muslim one. Both have become public toilets. The fate of one, has become the fate of the other. The locals freely use either cemetery depending on which is closer to them at the time of need, either at night or in the day time. No time is sacred to the locals, in terms of their use of the cemetery as a public toilet. Then they step inside and pee or pass faeces on the graves. Men, women and children flock to the cemetery in a manner that has a strange, awkward punctuality about it. Punctuality, in any other circumstance would have been alright. A poor, dilapidated fence, or what remains of it, runs round the cemetery. It is insignificant. A child can easily cross the fence. Pigs often enter the cemetery in consequence of human activity in the place. First the humans walked into the cemetery, and then the pigs followed. They grunt and sniff around, and dig the earth chewing and swallowing.
Anyone who visits the Nyanya cemetery will immediately understand why Mustafa Bello,a former Minister of Commerce, had to set up the Islamic Foundation for Development and Maintenance of Muslim Burial Sites, a body which will look after and develop Muslim burial sites in the country. A few other like-minded Nigerians are Trustees of the foundation. These include Mallam Waziri Zanna Laisu and Senator Adamu Abdulkadir, who is also a member of the board of trustee’s. On the Nyanya cemetery, Senator Abdulkadir says “Nyanya cemetery is terribly, terribly bad. The people in the neighbourhood take all their garbage and pour it on top of the graves. You find people within the beer parlours around there, who go to urinate on graves. You find pigs around, because of the litter all over the place. Pigs go to the graveyard to eat, and you know if they find anything that is human, they will eat it.” An online report authored by Bernard Umuteme of February 13 indicates “The Nyanya public cemetery has partially been turned into a public toilet by residents who live around the cemetery.”
A 2011 newspaper report on the Nyanya cemetery indicates that the cemetery is so bushy that families can no longer locate the graves of their dead ones. The situation today has hardly improved. “When I reached the Nyanya cemetery, I almost cried,” so says Ustaz Shehu Mohammed, the Assistant Chief Imam, National Mosque, Abuja. He adds that when he returned from that visit he informed the Muslim Umma about the condition of the Nyanya cemetery, and urged that something be done about the cemetery. He adds “In the process I met Senator Abdulkadir who volunteered to fence the cemetery with the help of the foundation he is part of.” Mustafa Bello tells Daily Trust that one of the aims of the Foundation is to completely uplift the cemeteries. His words “to create environmentally friendly, visitor friendly cemeteries, much unlike what obtains today. We want the cemeteries to be places where people will joyfully go to and pray for the departed ones. It will have flowers and solar power, and be very appealing at sight.”
Public toilet
Mammy road is the name of the bad, undulating road which passes along the very front of the cemetery. It is also referred to as Dunamis road because of the nearby Dunamis church. There are countless bars in the neighbourhood which surround the cemetery. It is as though bars are competing to open shop as close to the cemetery as possible. When a man has had enough to drink he just walks into the cemetery, without any reflection, and relieves his bladder. This is what may happen where there are no public toilets. Any place will swiftly become a toilet. A door has even been cut into what should be the fence of the cemetery, which allows people to illegally enter the place and turn it into a toilet. There is a position for a padlock on the door. A 10 minute drive from the well tarred AYA junction and the adjoining system of roads and settlements, the collapse in standards and the poor state of the human mind on Mammy road, is shocking. Human faeces, and urine have a preponderance in the cemetery, which itself is bushy and unkempt. Abubakar Mohammed, the caretaker, helps us to identify where the graves are located as we walk round.
Rubbish dump
But people do not just turn the cemetery into a toilet, they have also turned it into the local rubbish dump. This is what happens where there is poor or an inadequate refuse evacuation system. As we walk round we come across sections of the cemetery which have been overtaken by rubbish from the neighbouring houses. In a corner sits something like a pyramid of garbage. It functions like a tower in the cemetery. If you climb to its top, you have a good view of the cemetery, and its height shows that the activity has been going on for a long period of time. Here too another door has been cut into the ‘fence’ to allow locals to gain access in order to deposit the heap of rubbish from their houses into the cemetery. Just outside the stinking door, a woman sits preparing a meal, as though oblivious of the stench and the impossible filth around her. She owns a restaurant by the’ fence’, and there are other restaurants too, we observe. This part of Nyanya looks like a disease factory.
Bodies washed in the open
The caretaker is not on any salary, and was asked by a Mosque to look after the place. He survives on charity. If a family brings a corpse, when he has dug the grave and washed the body, then they usually give him a token of appreciation before leaving. To make ends meet, he repairs broken buckets, and other plastic items for the locals .This is why the gate leading into the cemetery is blocked by piles of buckets and various sorts of containers. The symbolism is powerful. He makes about 2,500 Naira from this activity on a good day. There is no room to wash the bodies of the dead at the cemetery. So bodies are washed in the open under the sunlight, the caretaker says. He shows us an open spot where the washing is done , just within the gate of the cemetery.The cemetery is not connected to the water system,so water has to be bought. He says that on average three jerry cans of water are needed to wash a corpse.There is no dignity even in death .No privacy here ,just a long system of indignities all the way for the departed one.
Scavenging on graves
Then there are the young boys who roam into the cemetery to hunt for birds. We see one who is creeping around the graves with his catapult, aiming at some birds that are flying around. He trips over a grave. Another boy brings in some goats to graze around the graves. Every five minutes at least two persons step into the cemetery, not to bury anyone, or to pray for the departed. The people are magnetically drawn to the cemetery. In an hour a huge population would have visited the cemetery. Nearby a woman boldly declares “I wanted to enter the burial ground, but I can see people standing there and taking pictures. What do they want?” Her intention is obvious. She returns to the Burukutu processing center, which is just a few meters away from the cemetery.
In the cemetery we come across a scavenger who has been visiting the place for a year now. He identifies odds and ends which he takes for recycling, and makes a little money in the process. He says that he is aware that he is actually stepping on graves while he is scavenging, but implies that he needs money to survive. His name is Bashir Adamu, and adds that a kilogramme of old coke cans will fetch him Sixty Naira, while a kilogramme of peak milk cans fetches twenty naira per kilogramme. The cemetery attracts an array of puzzling characters.
Noise, hemp, robbers
Mammy road too is a puzzle. When you drive along the road, you wouldn’t know that there is a cemetery in the neighbourhood. For instance, there is no signboard announcing the cemetery. Then the gate of the cemetery is blocked by rubber buckets and so many odds and ends. People hang around its front discussing their problems, or make plans for the next meal which may or may not come. Or they giggle, a sad empty giggle. Boys who sell water have turned the entrance to a sort of park, where they wait with their jerry cans until they are summoned by a client. It will be difficult to enter the cemetery if you arrive with a corpse. You may need to negotiate your way inside. The front of the cemetery does no honour to the dead. At one end a woman sells fire wood which is piled high. Next to her, another sells food. She is asleep. Her mouth is open, and she looks upwards as though praying. But she is not. Then there is a system of mechanic shops lined up in front of the cemetery. A patron who needs his car serviced will park in front of the cemetery and have his car sorted out. All the workers at its front make use of the cemetery. It is their toilet. They are not shy about this. There is a lot of noise too, some issue from a loudspeaker producing loud disharmonious music, which takes away from the solemnity of a burial, a prayer or even of a cemetery. How do you pray with all this bedlam around you? How do you compose yourself?
The caretaker adds that robbers sometimes take over the cemetery, especially at night. He adds that between 9:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. it is sometimes difficult to walk in front of the cemetery. It has also become a spot where Indian hemp smokers gather. Quite a number of news reports indicate that the area around the cemetery is frequented by robbers, and is largely unsafe especially during the late hours. Senator Abdulkadir adds that something urgent needs to be done about the Nyanya cemetery. His words “The first task is to make sure that we are able to have some perimeter fencing made of blocks, to make sure that the place is secure, before anything can be done inside. That’s our major challenge. What we need to get that done is between eight to 10 million Naira, and this is just to do the perimeter fencing at that particular site. It is quite a large site which deserves to be fenced from four angles. Each side is presently exposed to so many things which the dead do not deserve. Our major challenge now is to raise this money.” Ustaz Shehu Mohammed thinks that ignorance is behind the poor attitude demonstrated by locals towards the Nyanya cemetery, saying that he is sure Christianity, like Islam asked people to respect the dead, as they would respect the living.
Another reason he proffers is the growing materialism of the present time, and the fact that people do not bother about where they are coming from, and whether they would finally return to Paradise.
Ephraim Audu, Senior Special Assistant (Media) to the AMAC Chairman tells Daily Trust that there is a plan to fence the Nyanya cemetery, and that an advertisement for the fencing of the cemetery has already been published. He adds that the Nyanya cemetery has not been forgotten. His words “Nyanya cemetery is on our radar, and will receive attention soon, just as the Karshi and Karu cemeteries have been fenced.”
The graves at Nyanya are being threatened by poor human attitudes which inspire the locals either to dump refuse there, to turn the place into a toilet or to do both. The caretaker adds that the heap of garbage has already ‘seized’ or completely covered some five hundred of the many graves to be found in the cemetery.
To be continued