Morbid mandate

Editorial 

Although death is the inevitable end of all mortals over which man has no control as to when it happens, this is verily an inauspicious time to die.

In Lagos State, which is Nigeria’s epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic that itself is a health scourge with significant fatality rate, there are space constraints in morgues for body storage. Added to this, the room that relations have to hold customary final rites for their departed ones is circumscribed by lockdown restrictions warranted by the pandemic.

The Lagos State Government recently raised the alarm over congestion in mortuaries by non COVID-19 related corpses, saying such bodies must be claimed for burial within two weeks, after which the government might resort to mass burial of unclaimed bodies. To be sure, that portends a grim recourse in our cultural setting where befitting final rites are considered a sacred farewell offering to beloved deceased relations. But government apparently is being forced to the option by necessity.

Amidst subsisting restrictions over the coronavirus pandemic, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said government would allow funerals to hold, but there will be no parties or receptions after interment. He explained that the reason government is permitting burials at this time is because the deaths were not COVID-19 related, and that most happened before the outbreak of the pandemic. According to him, the mortuary congestion was due to churches not undertaking funerals during the recent Lent period; and then, the lockdown over COVID-19 that has hindered families from burying their dead. He warned that where funerals are to hold, not more than 20 persons must be in attendance and they must all wear face masks as is now mandatory in the state.

Making allowance in lockdown rules, the governor said burials were permitted so long as they adhered to stipulations on preventing the spread of coronavirus. “If we’re unable to see a decongestion of mortuaries across the state within the next two weeks, Lagos State Government will be compelled to seek to have a mass burial and we would not want to force this on anybody, which is why we are asking for the cooperation of all of us,” he said, adding: “This is not the time you need to wait for your brother or your sister or your sibling who is 10,000km or 6,000km away from here, for them to come back before you can have the funeral. These are very difficult times and I can imagine that families and relatives and siblings will understand that we need to have this, and we need to put this behind us. So, we are reiterating it again that we’ll give a two-week window and we’ll expect a lot of people to comply, after which the state government might have to take other decisions in that manner.”

The modalities necessitated by COVID-19 as outlined by the governor may seem to run against cultural norms of according befitting final rites to departed loved ones. But they are the hard reality of this time.

Still, there are difficulties working within this reality. For instance, a body in a Lagos morgue whose immediate relations are outside of Lagos may be difficult to retrieve owing to subsisting restriction on inter-city / inter-state movement. Unless specific exceptions are made, it might be an insurmountable task for relations to access such body for retrieval. Besides, with essential goods and services being items allowed to move across state borders at this time, special consideration may have to be accorded relations of a deceased person wishing to move the body from Lagos to another location for burial.

All in all, it is an inauspicious time to die, and one in which the dead cannot be despatched with customary valedictory fanfare.