You won’t believe how this Nigerian community transports their corpses to the mortuary

Sahara Reporters

So our problems are numerous, he said adding, “if it is only carrying a corpse on the head and walking several kilometres or conveying a corpse to a morgue on a commercial motorcycle, we will be hoping that one day the government will remember the plight of the community.”

Residents Lament Carrying Corpses On Their Heads, Motorbikes

On why residents of the community have to carry corpses on motorbikes, Ezeh said, “The reason is that the road is not passable and most of the people that died, the family usually take the body to the morgue and wait till dry season when people can access the community through vehicle otherwise if you try it during the rainy season, your vehicle will spoil on the road, or even get stuck in the mud.

“So because of mud nearly all through, they can’t bring their dead ones to bury until when the road is dry; maybe from the middle of November, December and January, they start bringing their dead ones to bury. Within this period, you see a lot of burial here. So that’s what we do.

“Our youths are trying – sometimes they go and dig gutters in all the places that are terribly bad to create waterways. So these are what the youths have been doing. Sometimes they clear the road and make it passable. They will create a channel where the water will pass and that is what we have been doing to alleviate problems.

“Our people have pleaded with the government at both local and state levels. Even when the vice president (Yemi Osinbajo) came after the first Fulani herdsmen attack, the governor of the Ebonyi state told Osinbajo that the road needed to be constructed and that the road is bad.

“That road is about 10km and from Egedegede junction to the railway crossing in the heart of the community is not much but it is not what the community can do on its own. Creating a gutter is not done by hand, it is not just what the community will handle only by themselves. So, we beg the government to help us do something about the road.

“You can imagine carrying a corpse on the head or conveying a corpse with a motorcycle to the morgue for several kilometres owing to the fact that there is a road. This is the reality we have faced.

“It is by motorcycle and even sometimes they use the same motorcycle to go and bring back corpses for burial. Sometimes, people use their heads to carry corpses but it is not everybody, though, there are some people who prefer their own to be carried by motorcycles. Those ones come during the dry season to do their burial.”