Stop Criminalising The Dead In Hospitals
BY SIMON REEF MUSA
For a nation that is incapable of making life meaningful for most of its citizens, such a country can ill afford the luxury of venerating its dead citizens. The level of reverence a country has for its dead citizens equals the worthiness it places on its living citizens
There can be no irrefutable affirmation to this than the words of the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, William Ewart Gladstone who once declared: “Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.”
In Nigeria, profiteering from the dead is slowly becoming the rule, rather than the exception in many hospitals, especially in Abuja. Respect for the dead is not only borne out of fear but also seen as a regular human trait. Various forms of burials by human societies are aimed at giving final respects for the departed. Not so with some Nigerians and hospitals that are now turning into hotspot of inscrutable disrespect for the dead for financial gains. The police are taking advantage of this scenario to further make a big kill from grieving relatives.
In outlining the roles of bereaved relatives to assuage their pains of loss, an Associate Justice of America’s Supreme Court (1988-2018), Anthony Kennedy, argues that family members of the dead “have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own.”
The last two weeks have exposed me to the hidden and dark alleys underpinning the mistreatment of bereaved families involved in grieving their loved and lost. Not only are Nigerian hospitals and morgue attendants turning the dead into commercial objects for economic exploitation, the introduction of a new rule that citizens who die outside medical facilities must have their corpses accompanied to the morgues by cops has opened a new platform of corruption in our nation’s crumpling health sector.
On Sunday January 17, 2021, a friend of mine received a phone call informing her that her younger brother had suddenly taken ill. I immediately advised he should be taken to a hospital for urgent attention. Not satisfied with the quality of healthcare given to him, my friend’s younger sibling would later be taken to the Jabi Federal Medical Centre the following day, Monday February 18, for further reviews and treatment.
At Jabi, he was left without any attention by the medics for over two hours. Reason: No bed space! Sensing that his health had taken a precarious turn, his relatives quickly took him to the Garki General Hospital where he was left unattended for about 45 minutes before a doctor declared him dead some minutes after 2pm.
Thrown into desperation to preserve the corpse, the relatives reached out to people for assistance. Finally, a space was secured at the Asokoro General Hospital morgue. My friend’s family was forced to cough out nearly N100, 000 to cover the cost of embalmment, ambulance service and bribe to the policeman that took the corpse to the morgue. To demonstrate the wickedness of these irredeemable workers of iniquities who survive on the tragedy of fellow citizens, another morgue attendant coerced the grief-stricken family to “dash’ him N20, 000 for accepting the corpse.
“The death certificate is N3, 500, but if you want it now, it can be issued at N13, 500,” said another mortuary official as they sought to make more money.
“We are not in a hurry to get the death certificate please. You may keep it for now until the burial is completed,” one of the relatives fired back.
After an initial agreement and full payment of N130, 000 to one of the Asokoro morgue attendants to use the hospital’s official ambulance in transporting the corpse to the South-east, the mourning family members were later forced to use a private Volvo ambulance to convey the corpse at the cost of N110, 000.
On Friday January 29, 2021, my neighbour lost his mother and requested I follow him to the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, to deposit the corpse. It was chaotic scene as many patients littered the emergency unit, with some relatives making a makeshift homes under the mango tree.
“We need a doctor to confirm the death of my neighbour’s mum,” I requested a nurse who seemed overwhelmed and weary by the increasing number of patients and relatives seeking attention.
It took about 10 minutes for her to follow me to the back of the car where my neighbour was sitting quietly, and holding the corpse of his mum. The nurse flashed a beam of light on the cold body of the old lady and, after some probing looks, drew my neighbour’s wife and me away from the earshot of others.
“Mama is dead. Please take heart. The practice now is that hospitals no longer accept corpses without a police report. I advise you to go to the nearest police station and get a policeman to come and deposit the corpse,” she said.
Memory of Asokoro flashed through my mind!
Desperate for a solution, we worked the phones. We finally got a policeman who had earlier arrived to deposit the corpse of a young man that had been stabbed to death by a mob. That saved us the pain of roaming the streets in search of a police station. The paperwork was finally completed after nearly two hours and we soon headed to the morgue a few minutes before midnight. The morgue stinks to high heavens. It is clear that a nation that is incapable of taking care of the living cannot be trusted to take care of the dead.
“You need to pay N1, 500 every day within the first seven days. After one week, any additional day will cost N2, 000. Embalmment is N30, 000. Bathing and dressing of the dead is N9, 000,” said the mortuary attendant.
To insist that a corpse outside the hospital must be accompanied to the morgue by a policeman is a curtain raiser to the enthronement of corruption. Death is certain to all, and I have wondered if these dealers in the affairs of the dead are aware that someday, it will be their turn to join the dead. For hospitals to insist on police reports before allowing corpses to be deposited in morgues amounts to criminalisation of the dead.
I have told my wife to spare me the shame of being accompanied to the morgue by any Nigerian policeman in the event of my death outside the hospital. I can’t just imagine my corpse being escorted to the morgue by a black-uniformed personnel. The dread of traumatizing my family further in the event of my demise is the more reason I have instructed my wife to ensure that I am buried at the nearest cemetery close to my place of death within the shortest possible time.
On this note, I call on the FCT Minister, Alhaji Mohammed Musa Bello, to look into the underhand dealings by these dark agents fleecing bereaved families in Abuja hospitals. If the nation’s capital is not spared the havoc by these illicit wealth-seeking fiends stealing helpless Nigerians blind, then, I wonder how citizens in the states are faring.
