Mainland Hospital in Yaba, Lagos State on Friday produced a wrong corpse when it was time to bury a murdered student of the Lagos State University, Ojo, Nurudeen Alowonle.
This was disclosed by the National Coordinator of Education Rights Campaign, Hassan Taiwo, in a statement.
Taiwo said this was discovered after family, activists and friends had gathered to collect Alowonle’s remains for burial on Friday.
Alowonle, a Faculty of Education student and Lagos State Chapter Coordinator of the ERC, was shot dead on Wednesday night after the Iba gate of the university, while a staff of the institution with him was injured.
Taiwo in the statement over the weekend, said owing to this, the interment of the member of the Democratic Socialist Movement and former presidential candidate in the Students Union Government election of 2019 could not hold.
He said: “I got to the morgue of Mainland Hospital Yaba in the morning of Friday, August 20.
“I met Nurudeen Yusuf in the presence of some doctors and other well wishers.
“We were shown what was said to be the remains of Alowonle.
“It was nothing more than a mass of entrails, which was highly decomposed and put together in a body bag.”
Taiwo told the world in the statement that mortuary attendants said those who brought the body of Alowonle, operative of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, told them vehicles ran over the body between 10pm on Wednesday when he was shot dead and 5am on Thursday when it arrived the morgue.
He added: Upon seeing the state of the body, we had to protest that there was no means to identify the entrails as a human entrails, let alone a human body.
“We said there was no way we could present this to the family as the body of their son.
“Our protest, including the assistance of sympathetic student doctors who studied in LASU and the HOD Pathology, eventually led to the revelation by the mortuary attendant that they made a mistake and presented to us a wrong body.”
Taiwo said the mortuary attendants brought another body, which was that of Alowonle, but it was discovered that the body had a hole by the side just under the rib cage on the left hand side of the chest.
He said tension began to build up and following discussion, it was agreed that an autopsy be conducted, but the ongoing doctors strike made it impossible.
He said a directive, however, came from the Chief Pathologist of Lagos State, Prof. John Obafunwa, that the body should not be released until an autopsy is conducted.
Taiwo, however, said a counter request came from the Divisional Police Officer who had said the deceased was not shot, but stabbed that the family must swear an affidavit that they would not demand an autopsy as a precondition for the release of the body.
He addedL “Of course, this request raised suspicion as to the motive of the police.
“It appeared to us that the police just wanted the body to be buried so that the truth of what happened can be buried with it.”
