UNDERCOVER INVESTIGATION: Filth, stench, bribery, corruption at Nigerian mortuaries and cemeteries ( concluding part)

For two weeks, investigative journalist ‘FISAYO SOYOMBO ‘travelled to the land of the dead’, spending extensive time at 12 government-owned mortuaries and cemeteries in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states. His findings at the mortuaries include bribery and corruption among morgue attendants, indiscriminate stacking of corpses, decomposition of corpses, and unhealthy and substandard preservation of corpses. At the cemeteries, he discovered that remains are prone to exhumation soon after burial — although the super-rich, who can afford the multimillion naira cost of private cemeteries, are safe. For the poor, Nigeria is not one of the best countries to live in, yet it is also one of the worst places to die in, Soyombo writes.

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. On both sides are greenery 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, who sat on the board of many prominent companies in the 60s and 70s, 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 agelong 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.

Source: International Centre for Investigative Reporting