Despite the spate of bombings in many parts of the country, which have claimed many lives and property, the federal government has said that it does have an accurate figure of the death toll and those wounded in the attacks.
The admittance by the government has however jostled relatives of the victims, who fear that the federal government was unconcerned about their fate.
Findings by LEADERSHIP WEEKEND revealed that none of the government agencies which are statutory empowered to deal with the blast victims knows how many people have so far died or injured in all the blasts that have so far taken place in the country since the Boko Haram attacks.
Among the agencies which have the responsibility to deal with the victims are: Federal Ministry of Health, National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA and the National Hospital, Abuja.
But responding to our enquiry about the death toll, the Ministry of Health said it had no record of the victims and was not in a position to offer one to the public.
The Chief Press Secretary to the Minister of Health, Mr. Isyaka Yusuf, said that what they had was not different from what the media had reported.
Yusuf said, “We do not have it. The only figure we have is that of the casualties emanating from the United Nations Office bombing, which is already in the papers and is not an official figure from the Ministry,” he said.
However, NEMA has said that it would make its figures available to the public in its annual report next year but did not say when that would be.
NEMA’s spokesman, Yushau Shuaibu, said it was not appropriate to release the figure to the public at the moment since it was constantly changing.
Shuaibu pointed out: “ A victim could have been hospitalised and recorded as wounded only to die shortly after his condition had been made public. That is why we can not release any figure to the public until we have confirmed from all relevant agencies of government.”
The agency’s position was also shared by the Chief Medical Director of the National Hospital, Prof. Bello Bala Shehu, who argued that it was not possible to get the exact death toll from the blasts since not all of the victims t passed through the hospital.
But a public affairs analyst and commentator, Dr. Dele Ogunbayo, has asked government agencies responsible for tallying the figures to be more responsive and stop paying lip service to emergency response.
Ogunbayo, who is a consultant to the Governors’ Forum Secretariat, called for a change of attitude to record keeping by government agencies in Nigeria.