POLICE AND DIGNITY FOR THE DEAD
The dead should be treated with dignity
The displeasure expressed by legal practitioners from Plateau State over the manner the police handled the death of a former Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), David Parradang, is well justified. Releasing a graphic image of the corpse to the media and a hasty statement about the circumstances preceding the death were insensitive. Under the aegis of Plateau Lawyers Bar Forum (PBLF), chairman, Ledak Dazuk Dafer, and secretary, Niri Isaac Darong, described the police response as inappropriate, and undermined the dignity of the deceased and infringed upon the family’s right to mourn privately.
While calling for a comprehensive and impartial investigation into the circumstances surrounding Parradang’s death, the PBLF has also advocated the “establishment of stricter guidelines to prevent the release of sensitive information and images in future cases.” We hope that the police and other authorities in the country will see it as a teachable moment because this is not an isolated incident. In Nigeria today, the treatment meted to some dead persons is troubling, utterly contemptuous, and traumatic, especially for their families.
It is indeed a measure of how much premium is placed on humanity in the country that even after they are dead, Nigerians are not treated with dignity. A former Chief of Army Staff, the late Taoreed Lagbaja, once lamented decomposing corpses in mortuaries of some Nigerian Army barracks across the country. While hundreds of corpses stay in mortuaries for years without anybody coming forward to claim them, some new corpses are dumped at these ill-maintained facilities by relatives or security operatives who bring in dead accident victims or dead armed robbers, thereby increasing the pile of bodies. This development constitutes a major health hazard for communities living around such an environment, especially at a time the country is battling bouts of disease outbreak.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one of the ways to offer respect for the dead is for mortuaries to give each corpse the dignity it deserves through freezing, cabinet placement and proper labelling for easy identification. Unfortunately, these cannot be provided in many of these facilities, including where the remains of those who served and died in defence of the country are kept.
Meanwhile, the fact that thousands of unclaimed corpses are lying in different morgues in Nigeria has encouraged a lot of unwholesome practices by mortuary attendants. There are stories of the sale of human parts. Besides, most of the mortuaries are housed in ramshackle buildings, and reek of filth and decaying bodies. Corpses are washed in the open, to the gaze of everyone, and kept in unrefrigerated and dirty containers, making them to decompose at will. To compound the situation, water used in bathing the dead is improperly disposed of as it is often carelessly poured on the ground where it can easily seep into shallow wells. These dead bodies are also piled on top of one another with fluids from those on upper cabinet freely dripping to those beneath.
While it may not be the fault of the health authorities that there are large unclaimed bodies in mortuary facilities, they should make conscious efforts to ensure every corpse is buried with dignity irrespective of how long they may have been abandoned. Beyond that, there is the immediate issue of how relevant authorities treat the dead, including in the announcements. The case of Parradang presents a glaring example. The police must embrace a more respectful culture of reporting the circumstances under which death occurred so as not to aggravate the grief of deceased families.
