‘I’ve got to bury my son in a charcoal form’

SCENE OF DEVASTATION: Nigerian rescue workers search the rubble from the guest house at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos which collapsed on September 12.

SCENE OF DEVASTATION: Nigerian rescue workers search the rubble from the guest house at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos which collapsed on September 12.

Published Oct 25, 2014

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Johannesburg - A father who lost his son in the Lagos church disaster has spoken out about his frustration over the “unbearable” delays in returning his remains to South Africa.

“You understand it but some times you don’t,” said Joe Jordan, a former ANC parliamentarian, who lives in the Eastern Cape. “What frustrates me is that when our government was offering to help, all that fell into disarray. That assistance was never appreciated in Nigeria. Now I’ve got to bury my son in a charcoal form.”

Jordan welcomed the R50 000 donation that the Synagogue Church of All Nations announced on Friday would be paid towards funeral expenses of each victim killed when a multi-storey guest house attached to the church, run by Nigerian preacher TB Joshua, collapsed in Lagos on September 12

“I would definitely appreciate that amount,” said Jordan.

Earlier this week, Jeff Radebe, Minister in the Presidency, said the process of repatriating the victims’ remains to South Africa could start as soon as the Nigerian authorities released the bodies. A total of 85 bodies will be flown back from Lagos, including 81 South Africans.

“The chaplain has described the nature of the bodies we can expect. They have told us it’s better to remain with the original picture we have of our son, rather than viewing his remains.”

His son, Sidima, 34, was the second eldest of his 11 boys. “My wonderful son, he was a very quiet somebody. But he was the only one who would confront me and say ‘why are you not in church on a Sunday – we are Anglicans – but you spend your whole day on Saturday in political meetings? I’m really going to miss my boy, but I’m left with his son, who is eight, to remind me of him.”

As a pilgrim, Sidima was apparently in the church building at the time of the collapse.

The church’s spokesman, Kirsten Nematandani, said it had completed a full audit of each family’s financial needs and had assisted with various household expenses as many of the deceased were breadwinners.

On Thursday, Radebe announced that DNA samples of the 116 victims had arrived at a laboratory in South Africa for analysis.

The DNA process was in the hands of the Nigerian authorities, who had appointed a laboratory at the Stellenbosch University to perform the analysis.

Nematandani said the church had travelled to all provinces in the past few weeks to visit, counsel and assess families’ needs and assist where possible.

“The church has pleaded with the Nigerian government to expedite the repatriation process for families to bury the deceased with dignity and receive closure,” he said.

”I cannot believe when a government is not able to listen to a religious group, to listen to the head of a synagogue, that it can be so arrogant. I can’t blame TB Joshua. The delay is not because of the church, it’s because of the government,” said Jordan.

Saturday Star

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