The University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) has announced plans to conduct a mass burial for more than 50 corpses that have remained unclaimed in its morgue for over 10 years.
The hospital management said the bodies had exceeded the statutory 90-day period for collection, while the growing number of unclaimed corpses had left the facility with insufficient space to preserve additional bodies.
Chairman of the Special Task Force on the Evacuation of Abandoned and Unclaimed Corpses, Dr David Ushie, said the mass burial had been scheduled for Wednesday, October 21, 2026, following a three-week grace period for families to claim their deceased relatives.
Ushie explained that the hospital had made efforts to trace the relatives of the deceased, but those efforts had yielded no results. He urged families and individuals with relatives’ bodies in the morgue to come forward and retrieve them before the deadline.
He warned that the hospital would proceed with the mass burial of all unclaimed corpses after October 21, adding that no further notice would be issued.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee in charge of Clinical Services, Dr Stephen Ogbudu, attributed the rising number of unclaimed bodies to the high cost of burial ceremonies and cultural practices that place considerable financial demands on bereaved families and their in-laws.
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Ogbudu said some of the corpses had been in the morgue for more than a decade, making their evacuation necessary to ease pressure on the facility, improve sanitation and provide a more conducive environment for clinical services.
Ogbudu said some of the corpses had been in the morgue for more than a decade, making their evacuation necessary to ease pressure on the facility, improve sanitation and provide a more conducive environment for clinical services.
