Dumo Lulu Briggs, one of the sons of late Chief O.B. Lulu Briggs has been lurked in battle with his stepmother, Mrs Seinye Lulu Briggs over the remains of his father.
In recent times, Dumo has resorted to granting several interviews to media organs in which he has routinely asked for the release of his father’s body for burial.
Last week, he granted another interview to Silverbird radio aka Rhythm 93.7 FM.
In this edition, Telegraph’s Elyger Agwu presents excerpts of his interview with Segun Owolabi:
Question: The Supreme Court in Ghana just recently ordered that the mortal remains of your late father be released to you in order to carry out the burial activities of the deceased. Now what actually did the ruling say and what is the importance of that historic ruling to your family?
Dumo: when I appeared on your programme on the 18th of January, I never had the thought to appear again on this same issue. Well, the Supreme court has ruled. Even before the Supreme Court ruling on the 8th of February, 2020, we had hoped that there will be no need for any further hindering issue. This is because the Inspector-General of the Nigerian Police had called all the parties in the matter to a round table discussion. At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that all legal actions will stopped in order to give our father a befitting burial. The inquest that was done in Ghana should be allowed to go on and the result of that inquest guide the Nigerian Police if there is need for any further action. All the parties involved in that meeting seemed to be happy with the outcome of it. On the following day, the 5th of February we began to withdraw all our actions in court. All the 13 matters in Ghana was actually brought by our stepmother. The only matter we had in Ghana was a sectorial application which brought before the Supreme Court saying that the Autopsy report should be filed in the Coroner’s Court and not in the High Court in Ghana where there is no proceedings with regards to the autopsy. It was the Coroner that had ordered for an autopsy. And it was on record that our stepmother had gone to a High Court in Ghana with an application to quash the order of the Coroner for an inquest, Claiming amongst others, that the Coroner lacked the geographical jurisdiction on the matter. The coroner had ordered for the autopsy report and that all documents with regards to the investigation that the Police in Ghana had should be brought to the Coroner. Our position had always been to take the matter before the coroner. Of course if there is an inquest, it should include an autopsy but they only made out an autopsy. We are not calling for a fresh inquest or for a fresh autopsy but the only thing we are asking is bring the report and that is what the Coroner is asking for as well. And that was the only matter before the Supreme Court. However the court in Ghana has on 23 of December 2019 given a ruling that the mortal remains of our father should be given to the family by custom, led by myself and it also ordered that the an undertaking be made that the widow should not be made to undergo some barbaric Kalabari customary traditions. Then on the 24th of December, 2019 we filed in the High Court that undertaking, signed by myself and our legal team in Accra. Of course, there are no such barbaric and inhuman practices in Kalabariland. The Kalabari people are a refined people, so there was no such practices. One only thing that was needed was foe our stepmother to appoint two of her nominees that will accompany us from Accra to Nigeria as we transport the mortal remains of our father. To get those two names I called a family meeting in Abonnema to get the names. She never acknowledged the receipt of the notification for the meeting. Eventually she informed us of her inability to attend the meeting. That meeting did not hold. Rather, what happened was, our stepmother had filed an appeal in Ghana, applying for a stay-of-execution of the earlier ruling. That appeal was eventually denied by the High Court. Immediately that happened, she took two other applications before the Supreme Court to quash the entire proceedings of the High Court. That application was also dismissed by the Supreme Court on the 11th of February, 2020. Instructively, she also got what she wanted by getting an injunction In the High Court. It was a win-win decision. The Ghana Supreme Court had declared that a widow does not have any leg to stand in demanding for the custody of the mortal remains of her husband and that the High Court was right in its ruling that the body be handed over to the family by the customs and that I would have thought should have cleared all impediments and of course, the next day she did was issue a statement in the papers thanking the Ghanaian and Nigerian public as well as the Judiciary and the government in Nigeria and Ghana for their support and purposeful intervention on the matter in a way of bringing positive ways of giving her husband and our late father a burial befitting of his status. She set everywhere agog by her claim that she had been vindicated by the autopsy and called for family unity. It was however, shocking that while she was celebrating the decision of the court, even though her husband’s mortal remains was still in the mortuary, in Ghana, immediately after the Supreme court ruling, by about 2pm on the 11th of February, filed a motion for an injunction that the High Court in Ghana to prevent the inquest that was ordered by the coroner.
Question: What questions do you think the autopsy report raised?
Dumo: The action she brought has nothing to do with the autopsy report because I have not even made my views about the autopsy report public. I have deliberately refused to go into that matter even though there are several issues that have been raised. The motion for an injunction which she filed in the court is to stop the transition funeral home from releasing the body to us. The issue now is not who has the custody of the corpse. That matter has been decided by the Supreme Court in Ghana and so, natural the transition funeral home was to release the remains of our father to us so that we can commence a befitting burial arrangement for the remains of our father. But she filed a motion for an injunction in the same court where she has a sectorial application to quash the orders of the Coroner. She brought an application to say that the coroner lacks the jurisdiction, therefore the inquest should not hold. She is now saying that given the tendency of matter before the High court that body should not be released to us until the matter is duly determined, otherwise it will be prejudicial to our case. There is no linkage between the body been released to us to give him a befitting burial or if the inquest will hold in Ghana
Question: If we have an autopsy report in the public domain and you are satisfied with it, what is the need for an inquest?
Dumo: Like I said an inquest includes an autopsy and in that inquest, you have the opportunity of looking into the autopsy report and all the other evidence gathered from the statements that were taken from the parties that individually has a role to play and which will help the Police in its investigation. It is instructive that the autopsy report will include the reports of the Police that the deceased was brought to Ghana dead on arrival. That is the statement by the Police; so there are issues to be asked but what we have said at all times that the Police should investigate the circumstance surrounding the death of our father. We are not saying that A killed him or that he was strangulated. All we are asking is that the Police should investigate the circumstances surrounding his death. But we have reasonable cause to believe that he died in Nigeria and not in Accra, Ghana and all the medical reports are pointing towards that. Also in the statement by the Ghana Police is that he was heavier than normal and was dead on arrival when he was brought to Accra. That statement is also on the autopsy report. The Police stated that, not my statement. The Police made that report to the coroner.
Questiom: I am beginning to think that if the Supreme Court has ordered the release of the remains of your father, why would your stepmother file for an injunction? Again, are you planning to conduct another autopsy after this autopsy report that we have? We have one already that could be said to be explicit; are you not satisfied with that?
Dumo: You see, that is the reason we wanted the autopsy report before the coroner. You know these are reports that have not been synchronized by any other pathologist. Autopsy report is an expert opinion and expert opinion can be queried. However, we have not raise any concerns over the autopsy reports even when there are so many concerns. Curiously, even the Coroner has said that he has come to a reasonable conclusion that the deceased did not die a natural death, so it raises more issue.
