The management of FMC, the only federal hospital in the state, urged those who have had missing relatives in the last couple of years to come over and check the corpses so as to identify their kins among them.
The federal hospital authorities disclosed that many of the bodies had been abandoned for over 10 years, though the total number of corpses were being verified and separated by the pathologists in the hospital.
Dr. Dennis Allagoa, Chief Medical Director of FMC, Yenagoa, explained that the move among other things was to create space in the mortuary as fresh corpses were being brought in on a daily basis.
He also cited pollution of the environment of the health facility as reason for the decision to evacuate the cadavers in the next three weeks.
“We issued a 21-day public notice because we noticed that corpses have littered the entire mortuary and there was no space to take in new corpses.
“As the decay goes on in the mortuary, the corpses have become a threat to human life because chemical and biochemical effects are ongoing.
“So, we want to clean up the area so that people can enjoy the benefit of a good site and space to bring in their corpses”, the CMD said.
Dr. Allagoa added that most of the unclaimed corpses were deposited by security personnel while others were found on the road and the rivers and brought to the morgue.
“A lot of them were corpses that were deposited by the security agents. Most of them are just bones, legs; they are not actually full body parts.
“People that died on the road, they brought them, from the river they brought them. People that died due to issues of militancy, they brought them in their mass and they kept them here”, Allagoa noted.
