Two families almost came to blows at the Lekan Ogunsola
Memorial Morgue of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos
on Monday as both relations lay claim to the same body.
The dispute over the body began when
the family members of the late Mr. Jones Ifekanwa, who died in the Dana plane
crash, were told that another family, who reportedly refused to disclose their name,
had also lay claim to the same body as their own.
The Chief Medical Examiner, Prof.
John Obafunwa, invited the Ifekanwa family to identify their late brother’s
corpse but found it difficult to effectively re-identify the body as they did
last week.
Another family, after going in to
identify their relation’s corpse, also picked the same body as the lfekanwa
family had picked.
For further clarification, Obafunwa
denied both families access to the body until the DNA testing results would be
out in the next four weeks.
Our correspondent gathered from the
elder sister to the late Ifekanwa, Mrs. Jennifer Enanana, that the mix-up arose
from the decomposing state of the body.
A fight almost ensued between members
of the families, but for the intervention of security men at the mortuary.
Enanana said, “My brother was
identified at the crash site. He wasn’t burnt. He had his identity card with
him and some other documents in his pockets; with that, they identified him.
“So this morning, they took us in and
they wrapped him up as if it was a gift pack, showing just his face not his
ears, not his head. Can you imagine? And we were telling them that this is our
brother whom we have identified. He has a mark on his lips and on his forehead;
it is just a unique feature of him and all that.
“Could you believe that another
family went inside and identified the same Jones’s body? A body that has been
identified by them and confirmed by us twice!That means they did not store the
bodies properly; that means there is something fishy going on.”