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| Joshua and his collapsed building |
Eighty-one South Africans were confirmed killed in a guest house owned
by the church of popular televangelist, Temitope Joshua, on September 12.
The bodies were removed from Isolo General Hospital and Mainland
Hospital, Yaba in Lagos State.
The airlifting of the remains was scheduled for
Saturday.
But, according to the Lagos State Chief Forensic Pathologist, Prof. John
Obafunwa, the South African and Nigerian teams were only able to identify 66
bodies.
“We’ve so far identified 40 bodies at the Yaba Mainland Hospital
mortuary and another 26 bodies were identified at the Isolo General Hospital,”
Obafunwa said.
The South African team, including military personnel, forensic experts
and pathologists were said to have arrived in Nigeria around midnight and
headed for the two general hospitals to identify and repatriate the bodies of
their compatriots.
Speaking further, the Lagos pathologist stated, “We have been busy since
yesterday (Friday) in preparation for today (Saturday). We have been here for
24 hours, getting the bodies ready; the bodies tagged, in preparation for
today. We have the bodies that were located essentially in two mortuaries; the
few bodies in Lagos State University Teaching Hospital’s mortuary were moved to
Yaba Mainland Hospital. And we have some bodies at the Isolo General Hospital.
“We knew the South African team would arrive today. They came in around
midnight. They came with their military, forensic and autopsy personnel.
There’s been cooperation between us and the South African team. They arrived
here at 4am. We started by identifying the bodies and setting up tents and
other things. By 6am we started picking each body, decontaminating them further
and bagging them — all these were done by the South African team.”
The South Africans, who arrived the country in two aircraft, shunned
local facilities and items. They came with four forensic pathology trucks,
generators, water, buses, pick-up vehicles and other items.
Efforts by SUNDAY PUNCH to speak to the country’s team of
forensic experts and pathologists, who were guarded by soldiers from the
Nigerian Army, proved abortive as the personnel rebuffed attempts made to
interview them.
The soldiers barred journalists from gaining access to the mortuary’s
premises, saying they were acting on “an order from above.” Journalists were
also prevented from taking photographs of the South African contingent.
Howerver, about three hours later, journalists were granted permission by the
soldiers to take photographs of the facilities and the team.
Reacting on the equipment brought into the country by the experts,
Obafunwa took a swipe at the Federal Government for its inability to make
provisions for forensic science laboratories across the country, the lack of
which, he said, had often led to mass burial of dead victims of major disasters
in Nigeria.
He said, “Nothing is too much to spend on identifying victims of
disasters, taking care of the dead through forensic pathology services. (Look
at what the South Africans have demonstrated to us:) one vehicle for each of
their provinces, and the population is so small; should there be a mass
disaster in a particular area that requires three or four of these trucks, they
will be mobilised from other provinces to that place. Nigeria needs a
functional forensic science laboratory. And why is this too difficult for the
FG to establish? We don’t have a single functional forensic science laboratory
in this country.
“You can imagine if Lagos government had not embarked on this kind of
thing, all these bodies would have been given mass burial. Today, we can safely
say to South Africans, ‘Come and collect your bodies because we’ve identified
them. We’ve been working hand in hand with them in the area of finger-printing,
Deoxyribonucleic acid analysis; we have to give credit to them as well. When we
talk about Nigeria being the giant of Africa, I think we are just fooling
ourselves.”
On Wednesday, Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola gave permission to
the SA authorities to repatriate the bodies of the victims of the Synagogue
collapsed building at Ikotun-Egbe, Lagos.
The victims were identified through DNA analysis.
Fashola had met with a South African government official, Jeff Radebe,
on Wednesday, giving the country the go-ahead to collect the bodies.
Additional report from Punch
1 comment:
heh!e mercy!! Lord help
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