The victims of Ọwọ church massacre will be given a very decent burial and a park will be built to memorialize them. This is contrary to reports by some newspapers and blogs that the victims will get mass burial.
Reacting to news making the rounds that the Ondo State government and the Catholic Church has concluded arrangements for a mass burial for the victims, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, the Ondo State Commissioner for Regional Integration and Diaspora Relations said this is not true.
In a post she made on her Facebook wall early Tuesday, Ademola-Olateju wrote “ I don’t want to believe it is mischief, I think it is ignorance. Before arriving at this conclusion, I thought long and hard about the reporting. I put this misleading report to the quality of reporters Nigerian newspapers are hiring. We are already reaping the fruits of our education system”.
Narrating on the level of corporation between the state government and the Catholic Church, she wrote that “ Last week when Governor Akeredolu received Catholic Bishops at Ọwọ, all EXCO members were on hand. We all know the Catholic Church is one of the most powerful institutions in the world. They have a great history and tradition to draw from. They even have a country, the Vatican. The Catholic Bishop of Ondo, The Most Reverend Jude Arogundade requested for land to bury the victims”.
“He asked that the land be big enough, because they will build a memorial dedicated to the victims with their names. Even those who have taken their dead to Kogi and the Southeast will have headstones. They are planning a memorial park, the likes we have never seen in this country. The governor approved the request immediately”.
“Is a memorial park with individual headstones a mass grave? Is creating a memorial park to make sure we never forget a mass burial? May God save us from ignorance, the evil of misinformation and the evil of ourselves”, she concluded.