Mortuaries in the port city are overcrowded with abandoned corpses. In a communiqué signed by the Divisional President of the Commission in charge of Abandoned Corpses in Wouri, Naseri Paul Bea, 120 corpses were abandoned from December 27, 2013 till date.

Going by the communiqué, family members have been given till November 13, 2014 to claim their corpses else the Commission will carry out mass burial.

An abandoned corpse according to law is one that has spent over 60 days in the mortuary. Thus family members who do not consider their corpses as abandoned, might be surprised to learn that the corpses they delayed claiming in order to prepare grandiose burial ceremonies have been buried in a mass grave.

This is an occasion for families with missing members to check on the list of identified abandoned corpses pasted in mortuaries concerned and view unidentified corpses in order to identify relatives.

Most abandoned corpses are accident victims of hit-and-run and victims of jungle justice, as well as victims of family conflicts and lack of financial means.