Anambra State, Nigeria — In a deeply emotional and tragic turn of events, a man in Anambra State was seen this morning transporting the lifeless body of his wife on a motorcycle due to his inability to afford an ambulance.
Eyewitnesses along the Onitsha–Owerri road stood in stunned silence as the man, visibly grief-stricken, balanced the wrapped body of his late wife on the back of his bike. According to locals, the woman passed away in a hospital late last night, but the family lacked the financial resources to hire an ambulance to take her body home for burial.
“I couldn’t watch it without crying,” said a passerby. “He kept saying, ‘She deserves more than this, but this is all I can do.’”
Photos circulating online show the man solemnly navigating the dusty roads, his late wife carefully tied with cloth and resting on a makeshift frame built into the motorcycle. The scene has sparked widespread sympathy and outrage, as many Nigerians took to social media to call attention to the harsh realities of poverty and the broken healthcare and support systems that make such heartbreaking scenes a recurring tragedy.
This is not the first time stories like this have surfaced. In rural and low-income areas, it’s becoming alarmingly common for families to resort to improvised means to transport the deceased due to the prohibitive costs of formal services.
Many are now calling on local authorities and NGOs to step in — not just to provide emergency aid for grieving families, but to address the systemic failures that make such indignities unavoidable.
