By Rosemary Nwisi, Port HarcourtAnxiety gripped Rivers State on Friday following speculations about the whereabouts of the corpse of Odiari Princewill, who until his death on Wednesday was Executive Chairman, Asari-Toru Local Government Area of the state.He allegedly died of complications from Covid-19 and was subsequently buried at the Port Harcourt public cemetery on Thursday morning by officials of the state Covid-19 committee, in accordance with guideline of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).However,residents woke up yesterday to hear that about 10 unknown gunmen stormed the cemetery on Friday evening and exhumed the body and the casket and escaped through a nearby jetty to unknown destination.The state government and the state police command denied the reports in separate statements.Information and Communication Commissioner Paulinus Nsirim dismissed the reports as baseless and untrue.He said: The grave where the deceased was interred is still intact as no one has tampered with it.Government hereby warns families, friends and relations who may want to desecrate the grave of the deceased that the full weight of the law will be visited on them.Security agencies have therefore been placed on red alert to ensure that only authorized persons come near the cemetery.Any unauthorized person found around the cemetery will be arrested and be prosecuted.Spokesman for the state police command, Nnamdi Omoni visited the cemetery and said: we are here to see things for ourselves with a view to debunking the news making the rounds that the remains of late Executive chairman of Asari-Toru council that were buried in this cemetery some days ago had been exhumed by unknown gunmen.We are here based on the directive of the commissioner of Police, Joseph Mukan, who asked me to specifically come and address journalists on the development.We are here and as you can see, the grave of the late council chairman is intact as was left on the day of burial, nobody tampered with it.From all intent and purposes, this fake news is only intended to achieve nothing but selfish aim to blackmail the command, paint us to a bad light and by extension cause unnecessary tension, panic alert in the state.Corroborating Omoni, secretary of the cemetery, Tamuno Tonye John said: The news of the exhumation of Chiefs body came to us as a surprise.Initially when the news broke, we took it as one of those news from the rumour mills and we did not have need to react to it, until we discovered that it had gone viral.We then became worried as staff of the cemetery, because we were sure that the grave site of the chief was casted immediately after the burial to ensure that nobody tampered with it.The news that some gunmen came, dug-open a grave and took away the corpse in its casket and escaped though Bille waterside is fake.Nothing like that happened..We close work by 6 pm every day and before we leave, our security men must be on ground to take over till when we resume by 6 am the next morning.We agree that the security here is not armed to reprieve anyone coming here with any sinister motive, but we will at least receive message somehow that unknown persons came to the cemetery for us to alert security men for assistance, but we did not get any form of distress call from our men here.Princewills widow has proceeded on a 14- day self-isolation protocol as directed by the state COVID-19 committee.The late Odiari had planned to bury his father on March 27, 2020, but the funeral was suspended following governments ban on public gatherings, burials and weddings among others as part of the strategy to check the spread of coronavirus in the state.
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