There was trouble at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital morgue on Tuesday when two families fought over the identity of a corpse.
Some families were asked to re-identify the corpses of their loved-ones who died in the Dana Airline plane crash of June 3, 2012, but this had become increasingly difficult as the bodies had started decomposing.
Just two days ago, there was fracas at the morgue when some families questioned the need for repeated physical identification exercises, when the bodies could have initially been tagged.
However, on Tuesday, two families claimed the body of Jones Ifekanwa, one of over 160 persons who died when the commercial aircraft plunged into a residential Lagos neighbourhood.
The two families engaged each other in a war of words which almost degenerated into fisticuffs.
Earlier, some members of the Ifekanwa family had identified late ifekanwa’s body, before a second family, who did not disclose their name, identified the same body as that of their loved one.
Following the clash, the State Chief Medical Examiner, John Obafunwa, intervened, asking the enraged families to wait another four weeks for the DNA result.
Meanwhile, the Ifekanwa family members were furious that they were called to identify the body a second time, after already doing so last week.
It was later gathered that the Ifekanwas were more confident about the identity of the body, while the contending family had told Obafunwa that they were not sure that the body was really that of their loved one.
Although both families had some difficulty, as Ifekanwa’s body was said to have started decomposing.
According to the Ifekanwas, it was the third time they would be identifying the body since the crash.
A visibly shaken Jennifer Ifekanwa, the deceased’s elder sister, described her family’s experience at the morgue as “traumatising”.
“Could you believe that another family went inside and identified the same Jones’ body? A body that has been identified by them and confirmed by us twice,” she said.
The Ifekanwas had expected that Ifekanwa’s body would finally be released to them before the contention arose over the identity of the body.
“The Professor (Obafunwa) came out to tell us that there was a problem on our own body, that there is a contention on the body. He said because of this he will not release the body,” Ifekanwa added.
It was also gathered that an angry relation of one of the deceased persons attacked officials of the hospital with a machete on Tuesday.
An eyewitness said that the enraged man kept shouting, “you can eat my brother’s body if you want, since you have refused to release him to us,” before being whisked away by police officers.
A makeshift police unit has since been stationed at the morgue following the incident.
Meanwhile, two more bodies of the crash victims were released to their relations on Tuesday, bringing the number of bodies so far released to eight.
