Lockdown: Lagos Mulls Mass Burial To Decongest Mortuaries

The Lagos State Government has said it may conduct mass burial for the dead if mortuaries across the state are not decongested in the two weeks.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu stated this when he announced on Saturday that the Coronavirus lockdown in the state had prevented people from burying their dead, thereby leading to congestion of mortuaries.

Sanwo-Olu said the lockdown in the state would be relaxed for families who have corpses in mortuaries to claim them for burial.

The governor, who noted that the congestion was not as a result of deaths from COVID-19, said the window would be open for two weeks after which the state government would be forced to conduct mass burial if the mortuaries are not decongested.

“If we’re unable to see a decongestion of mortuaries across the state within the next two weeks, Lagos State Government will now be compelled to have a mass burial and we would not want to force this on anybody, which is why we are asking for the cooperation of all of us,” the governor said during a media briefing on Saturday.

“This is not the time when you need to wait for your brother or your sister or your sibling, who is 10,000km or 6,000km away from here for them to come back before you can have the funeral.

“These are very difficult times and I can imagine that families and relatives and siblings will understand that we need to have this and we need to put this behind us.

“So, we are reiterating it again that we’ll give two weeks window and we’ll expect a lot of people to comply after which the state government might have to take other decisions in that manner.”