Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has just announced the decison of the state the government to conduct mass burials for dead bodies in state’s mortuaries not evacuated for burial by their families.
The governor, at a news conference at the State House on Saturday, said due to Coronavirus, many families had not been able to bury their dead ones in the last two months, which made the mortuaries to get filled.
He said there was the need to urgently decongest the mortuaries at this period and that he was giving families who had loved ones in the mortuaries the opportunity to bury them following the laid down guidelines.
Sanwo-Olu said he had given two weeks deadline for such families to evacuate their loved ones from the state-owned mortuaries, saying that after the expiration, the government would be forced to conduct mass burials for unclaimed bodies.
In addition, Governor Sanwo-Olu said he had ordered the release of the 209 prisoners according to the powers vested in him by the constitution.
He said the move was to halt the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The governor said some of the prisoners released were those who were above 60 years of age and some having six months to spend in jail.
He added that others released, had served over 95 percent of their jail sentence, some serving minor offences and the rest, on health ground.
Lagos currently has 657 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, according to the 24th April update from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC.
