Morgue mix-up leads to family burying wrong corpse in Delta

Relations of a deceased 90-year-old woman (names withheld) in Oleh, Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta state are now seething with rage after realizing that the corpse they buried penultimate Friday was a wrong one.


They were handed the wrong corpse at the Oleh Central Hospital in a mix-up. The truth only came to light last Monday, three days after the burial.

The bereaved family quickly went to exhume the wrong corpse and interred the ‘real’one, The Nation gathered yesterday.

A source close to the family  stated: “The problem started when the family went to the mortuary to collect the corpse of the old woman. One of her sons insisted that it was his responsibility to take charge of his mother’s burial; he refused all advice on how it is done and wouldn’t even allow his mother to be laid in state for her friends and well-wishers to bid her final goodbye.

“If he had allowed us to do that, someone would have noticed the mistake and rectified it before it got to the embarrassing stage. But nobody saw the corpse and the burial went on smoothly, with prayers said and social activities. We buried someone we thought was our sister.