Corpse goes missing from mortuary on burial day OCTOBER 23, 2015 : SAMSON FOLARIN

Mrs. Ayoka Buhari

| credits: Family

Everything was set
for the burial of 55-
year-old Mrs. Ayoka
Buhari, who had
died after a brief
illness, in the Mowe
area of Ogun State.
The wake had held,
the burial ground
had been prepared
as friends and
bereaved family
members gathered
for her interment in
the family
compound on
Thursday.
But as the family approached the management of the TOS
Funerals, which manages a morgue in the Gbagada General
Hospital, for the corpse around 8am, the body could not be
found.
PUNCH Metro learnt that the corpse had been mistakenly
swapped for another.
A relative, Folorunsho Adeoluwa, expressed sadness over the
incident, threatening legal action against the owners of the
morgue.
Adeoluwa said the mother of four had died on Wednesday,
October 14, and was taken to the morgue.
He said, “The family was asked to come for the corpse at
8.30am today (Thursday), but when we got there, we
discovered that they were not ready for us. Later, they said the
woman’s husband must show up before they release her
corpse.
“Her daughter, however, insisted on seeing the corpse. They
brought out a corpse and she raised the alarm that it was not
her mother.”
Our correspondent was told that after much enquiries, a worker
in the morgue, identified as Femi, explained that there was a
problem of mistaken identity.
He was said to have told the family that the corpse was wrongly
tagged and given to another man, who lost his wife.
PUNCH Metro gathered that the deceased’s husband and a few
family members rushed down to Matori, Mushin, to meet the
man who was suspected to have taken the corpse.
It was learnt that on getting to the place, the family discovered
that the corpse had been buried.
“The man said he had buried his wife and he could not exhume
her body unless the family showed him the picture of the corpse
they have in the mortuary.
“We all rushed back to the morgue and took a picture of the
corpse that the hospital wanted to give us. The woman’s
husband has not returned from the place,” Adeoluwa added.
PUNCH Metro was told around 4pm that the first family had
identified the photo of the corpse as theirs, but it had not been
established if the buried one was that of Mrs. Buhari.
A relative, Deborah Ogunfowora, berated morgue managers for
being “careless.”
She added that the family had paid all the money for the one
week the deceased stayed in the facility.
She said, “They don’t know their jobs. They are just making
excuses. They said the two corpses were brought in at the same
time and the mistake happened when they were tagging them.
“Right now I have been getting calls from those at home to know
what is going on and I can’t pick their calls. Everybody is
apprehensive.”
The spokesperson for the morgue, identified simply as Olumide,
said the corpse had been found and the family was going for the
burial around 7pm.
“There was just a mix up, which has been sorted out. I am with
the family; they are driving ahead of me. We are on our way to
bury the corpse. The matter has been resolved,” he said.