By Chuks Eke
The spiritual leader of Igbo land, Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka, has advised Ndigbo in general to use the occasion of this year’s May 30 annual remembrance day of all Igbo heroes and heroines who lost their lives during the civil war to evacuate and bury all the dead bodies deposited in various mortuaries in all parts of Igbo land to enable the hovering spirits of the dead rest in peace.
He contended that the current high-profile crimes and criminalities going on in Igbo land are a result of restlessness of the ghosts of our dead ones, whose spirits are hovering all over the places in anger and inflicting on some of our youths to commit all manner of crimes to the detriment of our collective interest.
Speaking against the backdrop of the ongoing calls for a total lockdown of all the places in Igbo land to observe the remembrance day, Ezeonwuka insisted that the evacuation and mass burial of all the corpses littered in the morgues should be fused into the remembrance day as one of the top agendas of the ceremony.
He attributed the current spate of kidnapping and other criminal activities in Nigeria to unburied corpses littered in various parts of the mortuaries in the country, with particular reference to Igbo land.
According to the Igbo leader, “it’s an aberration for dead bodies to litter all the mortuaries without being buried because while their spirits are not at rest, their ghosts are busily hovering around, wondering about and causing mayhem to the living”.
“The incessant kidnappings of Nigerians and foreigners in various parts of the country, the negative activities of Boko Haram insurgents, Christian genocide, and general massacre of innocent Nigerians are examples of the handiwork of the hovering angry spirits of the dead ones, whose corpses are littered and abandoned to their fate in the morgues
Recalling that former Anambra state Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Patrick Agha Mba, and his wife were abducted by unknown gunmen few years ago on their way to Abuja to attend the wedding ceremony of Adaora, Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s daughter, Ezeonwuka who has a Chieftaincy title of Ogilisi Igbo, contended that so long as the corpses continued to litter in our mortuaries without being buried to enable their spirits rest in peace, their ghosts would continue to wonder about, inflict on our youths and continue to torment the living, pushing them to commit all types of crimes to humanity.
According to Ogilisi Igbo, “Many people believe that the long detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, and his eventual conviction to life imprisonment is the cause of insecurity in the country, thinking that once he is released, the crime rate will go down.
“But the truth is that even though it is a part of security measures, I must emphasize that the major reason for the insecurity bedeviling our country today is the unburied corpses littered in our mortuaries, and their angry ghosts are hovering about tormenting our youths and forcing them to commit all sorts of crimes”.
“I am therefore calling on government agencies, particularly in Igbo land, to enact a law making it mandatory for all the corpses littered in our mortuaries to be evacuated and given a mass burial, and to bury the dead as soon as one dies to enable the spirit of the dead back to his or her creator to rest in the bosom of the Lord”.
He, however, called on security forces to work hard towards rescuing all the kidnapped victims in all parts of the country, as well as apprehending all the kidnappers to make Nigeria safe for the entire citizenry.
