The corpses of Mr. And Mrs. Ekpe Okon Effiom (late) are still left outside totally abandoned at Ikot Uduak off MCC Road, Calabar five days after bringing them out of the mortuary.
According to the people living in the Community, the Children of the deceased have brought out the corpses of their Mother and Father out of the mortuary last Friday, November 8, to be buried on Saturday (the next day), but they were stopped by the Village Head.
Further investigation revealed that the Village Head wants to sell the land as she had already done so by selling a small portion which has been used to build a pharmacy – a situation the entire community is against. She claimed the deceased are not from the community, but the children to the deceased said their father bought the land and they have the document at hand.
The deceased son, Bassey Okon Edet said “That is my Father and Mother’s corpses and the compound is where my grandfather bought and later transferred to my father, Ekpe Okon Effiom. We have the agreement and documents of the land.
“The Village Head, Efio-Awan Asibong, that lives close to our compound wanted to sell our land. My father lived there and gave birth to 11 children (10 male and one female) and we’d lived here for many years and also given birth to children.”
“When my father died, all of a sudden, Asibong said she wants to take over the compound and she’d sold part of the land to someone who had already built a pharmacy. Now, we wanted to bury my parents, the woman (Asibong) said we shouldn’t bury them, stating that we are not from here.
“We sought help from the community leaders and the Police who said we have to bury my parents in that compound, but the Village Head insisted that we can’t bury our parents because they are not from here. She said her mother gave my father the land for free, but it was a lie because the document that my father bought the land is there. The land document was wrote and signed in 1954.
According to the Village Head: “One of the deceased sons came to me and I showed him a place (their family compound across the road) to bury his mother and father and he agreed, but his family rejected it and he didn’t come back to tell me, instead they came with the Police, shooting everywhere and insisting they must bury their parents as they started digging their graves.
“I earlier brought people to help dig the graves for them where I originally showed them, but when they started digging the grave, one of them, Clement Ene, went and drove the boys digging the graves away and said he gave me N60,000. I later called him and returned the N60,000 back to him and told him to carry the corpses to either Goldie Cemetery to bury them there, but they refused.
“They are my tenants, I gave them a letter over 6 months ago to go to Calabar Municipality Council to show that we have agreed to bury someone here. After they collected the N60,000 they gave to me, they agreed to carry the corpses to bury elsewhere, but they turned around and left them there – since Saturday.
“They don’t have any documents concerning this land. If they agree that they bought the land, then ask them to show you the agreement and the person that signed it. There’s an agreement between us and everyone we give land here, but where is theirs? If they’d insisted in burying their father and mother, they could have exhumed them. We would’ve gone to the court”.
