The secret burial was immediately condemned by the Ijaw People Development Initiative , IPDI, through their leader, Comrade Austin Ozobo and Ayakoromo youths led by Comrade Ebi Wayas who termed the secret burial sacrilegious and unacceptable.
.
In a four paragraph text to Saturday Vanguard, the group also vowed to pursue a legal means to ensuring that his remains be released to his community for proper burial.
.
Yesterday, NDLF former spokesman, Capt. Mark Anthony condemned the secret burial and stated that the JTF would on their own come and beg the Ijaw people to exhume the remains of John Togo for proper burial with a cost of N2billion.
.
He said," a major Ijaw person's corpse like John Togo's cannot be buried outside Ijaw land. The public cemetery in Agbasa, where he was secretly buried is in Urhobo land. Those who have buried him secretly should ask those who buried Adaka Boro in a foreign land what happened. Didn't the government later exhume his body for his burial in Bayelsa?
.
"We do not want to confront them (JTF) but we want to warn that they cannot bury John Togo in a foreign land. We could have forcefully removed the corpse from the central hospital, but we didn't want innocent people to be killed in the crossfire.''
Things like this will surely pop up when we have a secret burial for a corpse like that so the situation just has to be managed carefully.