Gravelooters Invade Awudome Cemetery

By Cecil Mensah

The activities of some daring grave looters at Awudome public cemetery in the Greater Accra Region is fast becoming a bother to residents in the area, as they continue exhuming dead bodies which have been buried at the western part of the cemetery with impunity.

According to some reliable sources, that portion of the cemetery is full up and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has left it to fallow to enable it reclaim the land for construction of a graveyard that is befitting for the Millennium city.

Activities of the grave looters according to THE HERALD’s impeccable sources are carried out in collusion with some of the care takers and grave diggers stationed at the cemetery.

It was, however, not clear what the body parts of the exhumed bodies are used for but the sources are speculating that they are in high demand among malams and fetish priests who have resolved to advertise their activities on public radio, calling people to visit their shrines to have their spiritual problems solved.

The paper was also hinted that the upsurge of ‘SAKAWA’ business among the youth of today, who want to be rich by foul means, in recent times, has contributed largely to the rampant exhumation of the mortal remains of the ancestors of the land in the last months.

The source said, hitherto, these unscrupulous young men could use their computer savyness to lure thier foreign counterparts to wire huge amounts of monies to them, but now the situation had changed because a vast majority of counterparts had been warned about the cyber fraud industry, so the young ones have resorted to the practice of vodoo which demands that some particular items such as human body parts are presented to a shrine to enable them hypnotize their foreign counterparts anytime they made any demand.

Briefing The HERALD, Mr. Philip Lamptey, head of Rapid Response Unit (RRU) said the Assembly was aware of the havoc the gravelooters were causing to the cemetery and some unconfirmed reports had it that some Assembly staff working at the cemetery were in collusion with the gravelooters.

He said the Assembly had commenced an investigation into the activities of these actions and very soon the culprits would be named, shamed and subsequently sacked from the Assembly.

He told this paper that the cemetery in question were full and the city authority had left it to fallow to enable it conduct a mass burial to reclaim the land for subsequent new burials.

He denied rumours making the rounds that the Assembly had tactfully left the cemetery unattended to, enable the Assembly sell the land to a private developer in the city.

He explained that the Assembly had plans to develop the cemetery into an ultra-modern cemetery befitting the status of Accra as a millennium city.

He was worried about the state of affairs at cemetery and gave the assurance that the Assembly would reverse this trend rearing its ugly head in the area.