CREMATION BILL NOT TARGETED AT INDIVIDUALS, RELIGION - Lagos lawmakers

Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly have said that the proposed law on voluntary cremation of corpses and unclaimed corpses in the state mortuaries is not targeted at any individual or any religion.

Majority Leader of the House, Ajibayo Adeyeye stated this on Monday while briefing a delegation from the Sokoto State House of Assembly, which paid a courtesy visit to the Lagos House.

According to Adeyeye, the bill when passed into law, will address the challenge of congestion of mortuaries. “We are faced with the problem of congestion in many of our mortuary because people always abandon their corpses. Some will bring their corpses and they won't come back to reclaim them. We have also discovered that people deliberately come to dump corpses.

“And in this situation, what we tend to do is to get a land and opt for mass burial. But nowadays, we have been faced with getting land for mass burial because land owners are not willing to give their lands for mass burial, because they believe it would devalue the land.

So, we are not using the target any religion or individuals,” Adeyeye stated.

Buttressing his colleague, the Chairman, House Committee on Health Services, Suuru Avoseh added that the House doesn't make laws that are not workable. He also pointed out that any law that emanated from the Lagos House are not targeted at individuals.

Avoseh who is the sponsor of the Cremation Bill emphasised that the bill when passed into law won't make cremation compulsory for everybody.

His words: “The bill is not just about gathering firewood, putting fire in it and throwing corpses into it to burn them; it would be a systematic burning. What we are facing in our mortuaries is too appalling and the bill is designed in such a way that it would be a voluntary thing, we won't make it compulsory. The other aspect is just that any corpse that is abandoned for a period of six months will be affected.

“Our laws in Lagos State are workable ones that give room for amendments. We don't make laws that will target at individuals because if we do, we also will leave office one day and it may bounce back to us. People are saying that Lagos is working and that is because our laws are also working,” Avoseh said.

March 26, 2012