Sunday, February 6, 2005

The Expensive Cemetery In Ikoyi By Reuben Abati

The Chairman of the Ikoyi/Obalende Local Government in Lagos State, Dr. Folarin Gbadebo-Smith is embarking on an aggressive fund-raising venture that is bound to make death an additional source of agony for the bereaved, and which can subvert the idea of the public cemetery. His attempts in this direction should not be allowed to pass without protest lest it becomes a model for other local governments, with far-reaching implications for the larger community, even beyond Lagos state.

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In a report in The Punch of Thursday, February 3, 2005, he is quoted as saying that his council recently reviewed burial fees at Ikoyi cemetery "to enable it to continue with the regular maintenance of the place." According to the story: "Gbadebo-Smith in an interview with our correspondent on Wednesday said the amount formerly being paid as burial fees which was as low as N500 before the review was ridiculous and incapable of maintaining the facilities at the place." And wait for this, and please note the import and the innuendoes: "He said the council had been responsible for the maintenance of the cemetery which suffered serious neglect when funding was not forthcoming as a result of non-release of allocations to councils in the state by the Federal Government".
Hence, burial fees at the Ikoyi cemetery have been reviewed in different categories as follows: a single grave by the elite class will attract N145, 000; persons in the middle class category will pay N85, 000, ordinary people will pay N50, 000, "while paupers burial will attract no rate as this will be done free of charge by the burial section of the council". Other rates to be charged by the council are N25, 000 for permit to open an old vault in the elite category, repair of vaults in the middle class and ordinary sections will attract between N10, 000 and N15, 000, while exhumation fee is N20, 000. Meanwhile, a new site is being constructed exclusively for the rich, and the fees for using that site would be as high as N250, 000. Burial permit, inscription of memorial and annual maintenance will also attract special charges ranging from N2, 000 to N10, 000.

At this rate, persons may have to write wills insisting that they should not be buried in Ikoyi cemetery or any cemetery under the watch of the Ikoyi/Obalende Local Government. With such high fees, the relatives of the deceased may find themselves perpetually at the mercy of the local council. The proposed new rates, and the logic of their introduction, can be easily deconstructed and dismissed as unreasonable, too high and indefensible. I intend to do precisely that. Let us begin with the Council chairman's argument that the new rates are inevitable because the Federal Government has refused to release the funds for the local councils in Lagos. It is a matter of public record that the decision of the Federal Government to hold on to funds meant for the 20 Lagos local councils is an act of lawlessness, following Supreme Court rulings that the funds should be duly released. Since 1999, the Obasanjo government at the centre has treated the Tinubu government in Lagos as if there is a personal disagreement between the two men involved.

At every step of the way, the Lagos state government has found itself having to insist on its rights within the federation. The Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been one of the most vocal critics of the Federal Government. He not only won the 2003 election as an AD candidate despite the President's determination to assert the influence and presence of his own party, the PDP, in the Western region, he has also had to take the Federal government to court on constitutional issues, establishing himself therefore, as an oppositional force to the Obasanjo presidency. I believe this is part of the sub-text of the Federal Government's obstinacy in refusing to release the funds to the local councils in Lagos. The personal element is after all a strong element, if not the strongest element, in political considerations. But where the problem lies, and a real danger requiring our intervention is that in fighting the Federal Government over the non-release of council funds to Lagos state, the Lagos government has been adopting tactics that amount to sheer incitement of the public against the Federal Government. And it is a crudely cynical and mischievous tactic. The focus is not public good, but realpolitik. The main substance is blackmail and mischief.

Since the disagreement with the Federal Government over the non-release of funds, local councils in Lagos state have been behaving like usurers and extortionists. Every little opportunity to raise funds has been exploited to the limits, and the public is suffering under the yoke of levies and increase in tariffs which continue to make life in Lagos unbearable. Some of the rates that have gone up include parking fees, tenement rates, refuse collection rates, shop rentals.... And now the cemetery. Just because of a disagreement with the Federal Government, Lagos councils are pursuing people all the way to the grave. The whole thing borders on harassment. Driving from one local council to another in Lagos state these days, can be a harrowing experience.

Every local council has one task force or the other, including those who collect money from you for driving a car, for having a radio in your car, for driving a marked car, for crossing their territory, for buying land, for daring to start a building, for buying a car, for marrying, for holding a party, and now, for dying...And as the rates are increased across board, the only excuse that is offered is that the Federal Government is withholding Lagos state funds! I think the point needs to be made that the residents of Lagos state are all behind the Lagos state government in the dispute with the Federal Government. Why must we receive punishment for our loyalty? The simple reason is the lack of creativity in revenue generation in government circles. What is worse is that the rise in tariffs does not translate into higher quality of service but greater harassment. Anyone who has had an encounter with local council officials in Lagos state can readily comment on their near-absolute lack of manners.

The second reason offered by Folarin Gbadebo-Smith is that the burial fees of N500 paid hitherto was rather low, and not enough to maintain the facilities at the Ikoyi cemetery. One, what facilities is the local council chairman talking about? The Ikoyi cemetery is as badly maintained as that other public cemetery called Atan cemetery. There have been reports over the years of stolen corpses and caskets. At the Ikoyi cemetery in particular, there have been reports of overgrown bushes, exposed graves with human parts flying all over the place. At the worst of times, the place stinks. It is an insult to the dead. Would more money change this? I doubt. Besides, how did the Ikoyi/Obalende Local Government arrive at the new rates? Were there any consultations with the community or not? Death is meant to be a leveller. It is the last place of refuge where democracy can be assured, and all men can be one irrespective of age and class. Why is the Ikoyi/Obalende local government talking of class and status in the graveyard and linking that to cash? It is nice that paupers are being granted the right to die, and a free space to sleep, but with the kind of profit motive that is driving Gbadebo-Smith's idea of the public cemetery, you can imagine that the so-called pauper will be restricted to the hellish part of the cemetery. But is there class in Heaven too? I think the problem is one of a misconception of the idea of the public cemetery. Gbadebo-Smith is using the Victoria garden cemetery, an exclusive private resting place, as his model. This is wrong.

A public cemetery is a place of remembrance. Its significance lies in the manner in which it helps the community to construct its own history across generations. If it is properly maintained as a hallowed place of rest, it can serve as a platform for societal moral regeneration. In Europe, and the United States, public cemeteries are specially maintained, when you visit them, you are awed by the ritualistic nature of the ambience, the history, both individual and public, that flows from the tombstones, and as you move from one to the other in the midst of nature and music, you are reminded of your own mortality, you are granted a vision, even if through a film darkly of after-life. In the United States, and Germany, I visited public cemeteries, and resting places in the basement of churches, and I was struck by the kind of statement that those societies were making about man in transition, and the link between the past and the present. Chapels are even provided where you are invited to speak to your God about your own life and the prospect of death that lies ahead like a prize at the end of a journey.

In Nigeria, we do not have that kind of sense of value. We treat death like mere waste and a sign of bad luck. We do not have a national cemetery. We have not erected memorials for our dead, beyond cenotaphs that are eventually turned into billboards by aggressive advertising agencies. The Ikoyi/Obalende Local Government is guilty of this misconception. There are many persons who would love to be buried in Lagos. At the heart of the process of death and dying is the concept of place and identity. When a man dies, he may wish to be buried in the city where he lived, where his fortunes are located, or in the land where his citizenship is established. High usurious rates at the cemetery can rob such persons of that search for identification in after-life. Public cemeteries ought to be maintained by the local council with a higher sense of ideals than a mercantile obsession with profit.

Local councils being at the centre of the community ought to be more interested in helping the community to build its own history through the preservation of the dead. Half of the money that is stolen at the local councils or wasted on conspicuous consumption can be used to maintain cemeteries. The private sector can be approached to help maintain cemeteries and raise standards. Chasing families about with huge cemetery rates merely deepens the grief of loss as much as it advertises a poverty of imagination. Sadly, most families do not have any alternative. Cremation is not yet a popular option in Nigeria. There is also the strong traditional and religious belief that it is better to bury the dead and return "earth to earth". Like undertakers, the Ikoyi/Obalende Local Government has seen a big market for profit in levying the dead for dying. If the intention is to discourage dying, we would understand, but it is not, because death is the inevitable fact of life, the full stop at the end of the sentence of living, the debt from which there is no escape.

The commercialisation of the Ikoyi cemetery at the altar of profit and political expediency, indeed the use of the cemetery as a political tool is yet another reflection of the low value that is placed on human lives and the dignity of the human person by our governments. The political economy of death in our land reflects a lack of understanding of death as social iconography. The sociology of death in Nigeria reflects the failure of public memory in terms of the official treatment of an otherwise useful process of historification. It is without any apologies whatsoever that I suggest a reconsideration of the class-determined, profit-motivated, politics-inspired new rates that are being introduced at the Ikoyi cemetery in Lagos. And let no one come up with the unintelligent argument that this is the way things are done in other countries. To such a silly argument, I shall provide a comparative sociology of death, dying and cemeteries.