An ugly drama played out at Adani community, Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state on Friday as mortician allegedly refused to release the corpse of a woman for burial as he insisted that he must be paid in new naira notes.

The mortician of Health of the Sick hospital, Adani Uzo-Uwani was said to have allegedly refused to accept either electronic money transfer or old naira notes insisting that he could only take new notes.

According to WithinNigeria’s source, Chibueze Ajodo, “the mortician billed the family of the deceased the sum of One hundred and fifty thousand naira.

The family who has been preparing for the burial of their mother slated the burial Holy Mass to be held at 7:30 am today. So, in the morning, their family members converged at Christ the King Catholic parish, Adani, venue of the requiem Mass. By 8am, the corpse was no where to be found for the Mass”.

Narrating further, Mr. Ajodo said that “we were disturbed as to why they have not brought the corpse for the Mass only to discover few minutes later that the corpse has been seized by the mortician.

“We went to the mortuary only to hear from the mortician that he no longer accepts transfer because of the high cost of withdrawing money from POS. When the family members brought old naira notes, he refused, insisting that it must be new notes.

“The family members, however pleaded with him to release the corpse for requiem Mass and burial but he refused, insisting his money must be completed before he could release the corpse.”

By the time the payment was completed, it was already 3pm. The burial Mass however took place at 4pm while the burial stretched till 5pm.

However, all efforts to get the reaction of the priest in charge of the hospital and Christ the King, Adani, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Agboke proved abortive as his phone number was not going through.