David Onwuchekwa, Nnewi
A member of Board of Trustees of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka has called on Igbo to put a stop to the practice of taking dead bodies to mortuaries, rather the dead should be buried “shortly after the departure of the soul from the body.”
Chief Ezeonwuka, an acclaimed spiritual leader of Igboland, said he was disappointed that his series of calls on the issue was being ignored to the detriment, according to him, of a better society free from crime, diseases and untimely death.
He repeated his call for total removal of corpses deposited in mortuaries across Igbo land maintaining that keeping dead bodies in the morgue was dangerous “and even more dangerous than Coronavirus because the soul of the deceased is restless and angry. The body should be immediately committed to mother earth with full burial rites given to it and the ashes to ashes, sand to sand carried out to bid the body and the soul a farewell to the next world for judgment.”
“When someone dies, put the body in six feet underground immediately and prepare for the funeral ceremony which can come later instead of keeping the corpse in mortuary or fridge waiting for the day to celebrate it.
“You don’t celebrate dead bodies rather you can remember a dead person someday. The Catholics have a day in which they remember all souls and the saints. When you bury the dead immediately and later give it the burial rites, you have prepared the soul for reincarnation into a normal human being. But when you fail to do so and keep the dead body in the cold room, the soul will bring diseases, youth restiveness, deaths and possess people to be armed robbers and kidnappers and idleness, “ he added.
He gave an example of how the burial/funeral rites given to Biafra fallen heroes by Governor Willie Obiano yielded good results in Anambra by enhancing security in the state, noting that the souls of Biafra fallen heroes were instrumental to desertion and bad security situation in Anambra over time.
“For nearly forty years, I made a case and clamoured for the Biafra fallen heroes to be given a befitting burial rites because I discovered that their souls were behind violent crimes such as armed robbery, youth restiveness and kidnapping in Igboland. Successive governments ignored me until Obiano came on board and did it. The result is here in Anambra for everybody to see. Anambra is now the safest state in Nigeria.”