A shocking incident has left the Afikpo community in Ebonyi State in distress after the body of a 94-year-old woman vanished from a mortuary ahead of her burial.
The family’s ordeal reportedly worsened when a mortuary attendant allegedly tried to hand over a different corpse. The attendant fled after the family discovered the swap.
What was meant to be a celebration of the elderly woman’s life quickly turned into grief and confusion. The family had already completed funeral plans.
A relative, Nneka Agwu, had earlier shared videos on Facebook showing preparations for the burial, including large cooking pots and food arrangements.
She wrote: “94 years well spent, pots are going down and celebration is just getting started.”
In another video, she said: “We’re preparing for my grandma,” while displaying meats being fried for the event.
The mood changed when relatives arrived at the mortuary to collect the body and found it missing.
In a video shared on Agwu’s Facebook page on Sunday, the deceased woman’s granddaughter broke down in tears as she spoke about the incident.
“My grandmother’s corpse is missing and the mortuary attendant gave us another dead body and now he is on the run,” she said.
The family also accused police officers of mishandling the case and helping key suspects escape.
According to them, after discovering the body was missing, they detained a female worker believed to be responsible for the remains. However, they alleged that police officers later allowed both the worker and an officer to leave the scene.
“Yesterday my grandmother’s corpse was missing, we did not see her body,” the granddaughter lamented. “And this police people, they came to arrest the only person we could hold responsible and the lady ran, the police officer ran and till now we have not seen the lady involved.”
Report says the family rejected a substitute corpse allegedly offered by the mortuary. They are demanding an independent investigation into the whereabouts of their grandmother’s remains and the arrest of the fleeing mortuary workers and any police officer allegedly involved.
See video here.
