Posted on: 05:58 Fri, 08 Jul 2016



• ‘Human skulls, torsos, arms most
commonly stolen’

• Christian, Muslim leaders condemn
‘attack on graves’

Cemeteries in Kwara State are no longer a resting place for the dead.

They are now being regularly
violated no thanks to robbers and
scavengers targeting bodies in
graves for mutilation and theft of
choice parts.

The practice these days is a far cry
from when, decades ago national
attention was riveted by
revelations that criminals invaded
the grave of the late wife of a
governor in the east.

Then, the grave yard vandals did
not steal her body parts but helped
themselves to the cash, expensive
jewellery and clothing materials
she was alleged to have been
buried with.

But the criminals and practitioners
of rituals these days go for selected
body parts such as genitalia, skulls,
heart, liver and whatever else they
may fancy in the decomposing
body.

But offensive as this seems, it is not
new in some other parts of the
world.

A story was published in the Argosy
magazine in 1879 that
Shakespeare’s skull was stolen from
Holy Trinity in 1794.

In Ilorin, Kwara State capital,
digging up fresh graves in search
for selected human parts has
become a daily occurrence that
“Rest in peace” and “Sleep on
beloved” often engraved on
tombstones have become
meaningless as the dead are
violated in their resting place by
ritualists.

Sources told The Guardian, Muslim
cemeteries at Oseere and public
cemeteries at Oke-Oyi, a sleepy
settlement adjoining Ilorin from
the east, are the worst hit.

“We took the remains of a
brother to the cemetery early this
month and laid him to rest
according to the Islamic rites. But
when we returned to the grave
two days after with the aim of
putting concrete on the tomb, to
our surprise we met a
dismembered body outside the
grave,” a source told The
Guardian in Ilorin.

Another source said:-

“At Oke-Oyi, we went to pray at
the tomb of our departed mother
barely a year after her death only
to see bits of the wooden casket
on the tomb rather than inside
the grave suggesting that some
people might have tampered with
the remains after burial.”

Former Secretary of Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN) Dr.
Olusola Ajolore urged the
government especially local
councils, to intensify efforts at
providing adequate security at the
cemeteries in Kwara State.

According to Ajolore:-

“Apart from profaning the
cemeteries, the act should be seen
as criminal and ungodly. But we
need more security at the
cemeteries to stem the vice.”

Similarly, the Chief Imam of Ilorin,
Alhaji Mohammed Bashir cautioned
“those directly or indirectly”
stealing from the cemeteries to
refrain “as such would not escape
God’s judgment in the long run
even if law enforcement agents fail
to arrest them and bring them to
book.”

Speaking with The Guardian on the
development, Police Public
Relations Officer (PPRO) in Kwara,
Ajayi Okasanmi said: “No such
report has been brought to our
knowledge”.

Okasanmi, however, urged
members of the public to volunteer
information to the Police on the
vice just as he threatened that local
security guards employed to keep
watch may henceforth be
prosecuted for any recorded theft
at the cemeteries.