There are indications that some body parts are still buried under the rubble at the crash site of the ill-fated Dana MD-83 plane in Iju-Ishaga area of Lagos.
Scrap metal collectors, who besieged the site where at least 158 people made up of passengers, crew members and residents died, unearthed some of the body parts on Friday.
Structures at the site were demolished on June 10, and immediately security operatives, who had kept curious visitors at bay since the incident, left the site, scavengers swooped on the site to collect scrap metals.
On Saturday when our correspondent visited the site, many of the youths who brought carts to the site had iron-cutters with them.
When one of them was asked if he had found anything that resembled human body parts at the scene since he started collecting metals there, he promptly pointed our correspondent to another youth, Abdullahi Musa.
Musa told our correspondent he was the one that found some body parts the previous day.
He said in pidgin English, “I was collecting some metal rods when I saw an object and tried to pull it out of the ground.
“Immediately I pulled it out of the ground, I knew what it was. It was a leg, from the knee to the ankle. The bone still had flesh on it. I saw some ribs in that part of the rubble too.”
Musa reluctantly took our correspondent to the spot he found the parts. Chunks of decaying flesh swarmed by houseflies were seen close to the spot.
The environment also reeked of putrid smell.
One of the residents, Joshua Akogun, said, “I have always believed that some parts are still under there because of the smell. I wasn’t really surprised when somebody found some human parts there yesterday (Friday).
Another resident, Henry Aikeremiokha, said pulling out security operatives from the area was a bad idea.
“What even stops some people coming here to collect body parts for devilish reasons if they think they will find some here?” Aikeremiokha asked.
One of the scavengers at the site, Ibrahim Umar, said when Musa found the human parts, he decided not to come to the site again but had to come back on Saturday because others were making lots of money from the scrap metals found there.
However, the Managing Director of LASEMA, Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, told our correspondent on the telephone on Sunday that there were no body parts in the rubble.
He said, “I can assure you that there are no human body parts on that site. We have already sifted through the rubble and ascertained that there were no human remains there.”
Culled from Punch
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