The police in Imo State have uncovered a privately owned mortuary in Umuhu, a community in Ngor Ngor-Okpala Local Government Area of the state.
The Commissioner of Police in Imo State, Aboki Danjuma, disclosed this on Saturday when a joint team of security and government officials visited the facility.
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PREMIUM TIMES obtained a video clip of the visit to the facility.
Speaking to reporters during the visit, Mr Danjuma said the police uncovered the illegal mortuary after a tip-off.
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“When we visited the place, we saw scattered corpses, mutilated corpses, in this environment. What we have seen, the corpses that we discovered are more than one hundred. And the owner of the mortuary is on the run,” he said.
The owner of the mortuary has been identified as Stanley Oparaugo.
The commissioner stated that the fleeing mortuary owner, Mr Oparaugo, had rebuffed several invitations extended to him, prompting the police to declare him wanted.
“And by the information we gathered, they used this place in dumping the corpses for what they called organ harvesting,” he said.
He appealed to families whose loved ones are missing to come forward and ascertain if the bodies of their missing relatives were part of the corpses found in the facility.
“By God’s grace, we arrested a suspect. And he’s going to face the wrath of the law,” the police chief said without mentioning the identity of the arrested suspect.
Also speaking, the Commissioner for Health in Imo State, Chioma Egu, told reporters that they were at the facility at the instance of Governor of Imo State Hope Uzodimma following a police report about the discovery.
Mrs Egu, a medical doctor, said the mortuary was operating without authorisation from the state government.
“We have checked our records, and we’ve not seen this place registered or any up-to-date registration of this facility in the Ministry of Health,” she said.
Continuing, the health commissioner said: “So we’ve come here to inspect, and we’ve found hundreds of dead bodies decomposed, not taken care of.
“There’s nothing to show that this place is a mortuary. There’s nothing to show that there’s any way they tried to preserve the corpses. So we are declaring this place a place of public health concern.”
Okechukwu Ibeaja, the chief pathologist at the Imo State Specialist Hospital, observed during the visit that there was nothing to show that the facility was a mortuary.
“Even the environment does not depict an environment where bodies should be kept, because they are in a very big state of disrepair.
“There is no level of preservation of the corpses. There is a lot of evidence of mutilation,” Mr Ibeaja said.
On her part, the Chairperson of Ngor-Okpala Local Government Area, Chika Ibekwe, stated that she would publicise the discovery to enable families to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the facility.
Mrs Ibekwe stressed that after the publicity, the state government would conduct a mass burial for the remaining unclaimed corpses and then demolish the facility.
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“If we get a letter from maybe the attorney-general of the state, we will come back here to do a mass burial for these corpses and possibly demolish this building,” she said.
The chairperson explained that the demolition was necessary to prevent criminals from using the building as their hideout.
“If they are not using this building and they keep it in this condition, it can be a place for criminals to hide. So, we are not going to keep quiet, and we are not going to allow it to continue to happen,” she added.
