THE release of the identified corpses of the Dana plane crash victims was marred by slow process on Thursday.    

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that an undisclosed number of corpses were claimed by the relatives at the Lekan Ogunsola Memorial Mortuary of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).

This was against the promise made by the Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, at a meeting with the relations on Wednesday, that 20 corpses would be released daily.

“We will release the bodies in batches of 20 in alphabetical order daily from Thursday, to reduce chaos and to resolve some legal processes needed to claim the bodies,” Idris had said.

LASUTH Chief Medical Director, Professor David Oke, however, blamed the slow process on the late arrival of some of the relatives of the victims.

Oke said “some of the relatives did not come on time and so we took their reference specimen late.”

He added that “I cannot say precisely how many bodies have been released so far, because some relatives were not ready and some others decided to keep the bodies in the morgue.”

Professor Oke said “our pathologists are on the ground to see if they can use their experiences to further identify the remaining 16 bodies.”

He said the hospital would not charge any family for preserving their corpses until they were released.

However, only two families were seen to have completed the process and received their loved ones.

One of them was the relatives of the late Joy Alinson. They collected the remains of Alinson at about 2:15 p.m.

The body, according to a sister of the deceased who gave her name as Joan, would be interred in Edo State.

 “As we are going now, we are heading for Edo. We are from Ishan in Edo State and the body must get there today, “she said.

About two other families not willing to talk to press also collected their corpses.

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