A medical student in Nigeria was shocked after finding his friend’s body on the table during his anatomy class, BBC reported.

Seven years ago, Enya Egbe was studying at the University of Calabar when he was tasked with dissecting a cadaver alongside his peers.

Everything was copasetic until he realized that one of the three bodies belonged to his friend, Divine.

"We used to go clubbing together," Egbe told BBC. "There were two bullet holes on the right side of his chest."

The 26-year-old, visibly disturbed, fled the classroom in tears. He ultimately did the daunting task of contacting Divine’s family, who had been engaged in an ongoing search after Divine and three friends were apprehended by security agents while walking home from a night out.

"Most of the cadavers we used in school had bullets in them. I felt so bad when I realised that some of the people may not be real criminals," Oyifo Ana, one of the many students who ran out after a sobbing Egbe, said.

A Nigerian medical student was shocked to see friend's body in anatomy class.

Enya Egbe, couldn't hold the tears in after the cadava he was going to dissect turned out to be his friend of 7 years with with two bullets on his chest pic.twitter.com/8H8jsPxUpu

— Instablog9ja (@instablog9ja) August 2, 2021

Ana also noted that one morning she watched as a police van unloaded bodies covered in blood at the mortuary connected to the university.

Egbe was so devastated by finding his friend’s body during class that he fell behind on his studies for weeks, haunted by the image of seeing his peer on the dissection table. He graduated one year behind his classmates and now works in a hospital lab in Delta, an agricultural and oil producing state in Nigeria.

Ultimately, Divine’s family was able to identify his body and provide him a proper burial, but his case is one of the devastating realities that many Nigerian families have to face.

The circumstances also highlighted the lack of cadavers available in Nigeria for scientific study. A current law in the nation allows for “unclaimed bodies” in government mortuaries to be turned over to medical schools, with or without the decedent’s and their families’ consent.

According to Ulutas Medical Journal, a study conducted through a Nigerian survey reported that only around 10% of medical schools in the country had sufficient cadavers for dissection.

In addition, the state can also release the bodies of executed “criminals.”

More than 90% of the cadavers available are considered “criminals killed by shooting,” according to 2011 research in the medical journal Clinical Anatomy, meaning most of the subjects were victims of police violence.

"Nothing has changed 10 years later," University of Nigeria professor of anatomy, Emeka Anyanwu, who co-wrote the study, said.

Three out of four cadavers are a part of a lower socio-economic status, with 95% being males between approximately 20 to 40 years old.

"If no one shows up after a certain length of time, the bodies are sent to teaching hospitals," senior lawyer Fred Onuobia said. "But the situation is worse with extrajudicial killings, as relatives never get to know about the deaths or are unable to locate the bodies.”

Now, Nigeria’s association of anatomists is spearheading changes in law that would mandate mortuaries to retain full historical records of bodies donated to science as well as guaranteeing cadaver use is authorized by the families of the deceased.

Olugbenga Ayannuga, the head of the association said that he expects a lot of advocacy to take place around scientific study on humans.

"There will be a lot of education and a lot of advocacy so people can see that if I donate my body, it will be for the good of the society," he said.

University-of-Nigeria

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