Time to respect the dead

A nation in mourning…

It shall be well. But even before it does, we should begin the necessary but difficult conversation about the demons in us that prevent us from treating the dead with dignity.  

Many have expressed disgust at how the bodies of the victims of the August 6, 2025 helicopter crash were handled.

Some were shoved into jute bags, a short distance from where public officials were casually granting interviews. Can’t we afford body bags?  

Although we have NADMO and the police, accident scenes routinely become free-for-alls for wanderers and curiosity seekers, with many taking pictures and videos and often trampling on potentially crucial evidence for investigators.  

In the case of the helicopter crash, it wasn’t long before social media was flooded with videos of dead bodies from the scene, forcing the government to plead with the public not to share such videos. But it was too late. The horse was already out of the barn.  

Desecration

Of course, desecration of dead bodies during accidents or national tragedies is nothing new for us. It’s an integral part of our so-called “rich culture”, sadly.  

During the Circle floods a decade ago, bodies were tossed onto the backs of pick-up trucks like pieces of rubbish.

The same thing happened with the May 9 stadium disaster years earlier.

Years before that, the bodies of a medical team that was involved in an accident on the Accra-Kumasi Road were piled up on the roadside and covered with plantain leaves (yes, plantain leaves!). 

And many, many years before that, there was the case of a police officer whose mutilated body parts (after being murdered over a land dispute at Ablekuma) were photographed and turned into a calendar.  

And, shockingly enough, some people bought it! What is wrong with us? 

Funerals

More recently, what should be solemn occasions at funerals to celebrate the departed have turned into morbid displays of dead bodies in all sorts of positions, depending on the work they did before they died (one was propped up before a fufu mortar and a pestle because she was a chop bar owner; another was put on a motorcycle because he was an okada rider. And on and on).  

This is clearly unbecoming of the civilised society that we claim to be.

It is barbaric. And it is unacceptable. 

As the government investigates the latest disaster, it should do well to expand its scope to cover protocols for handling dead bodies in public.

If need be, appropriate laws should be passed to prevent us from behaving in ways that even animals don’t.

The writer is the Board Chairman for the National Development Planning Commission