24/08/2026
SHOULD WE REVISIT BURIAL PLANS
There is something even more painful to me: family.
I work all my life to educate my children and perhaps send them to Australia, Malaysia, America or Canada. I make sacrifices so they can have better lives.
Then I die.
And because my burial must happen almost immediately, my children cannot even make it home to bury me.
A person travelling from Australia, Malaysia, America or Canada cannot realistically get to Nigeria in a few hours. Even with the best arrangements, international travel takes time. A private jet cannot simply erase geography, immigration procedures, flight preparation and the distance between continents.
So what happens?
The child I sacrificed my life for arrives after the father has already been buried.
Never gets to put that first handful of dust on me.
Never gets that final moment to say, βDad, I am here.β
What is the meaning of all those sacrifices if the child I struggled to raise cannot be there to put dust on me?
We tell people to have children. We sacrifice for them. We send them across the world for a better future. Yet when death comes, that same distance may prevent them from saying their final goodbye.
I am not asking that religious traditions be abandoned. I am asking whether there should be room for exceptional circumstances!
Reasonable consideration for immediate family travelling from another country.
Perhaps there are already religious answers to these questions that I do not know. If so, I am willing to learn.
But if there is room for discussion, let us discuss it.
Questioning a tradition is not necessarily an attack on it. Sometimes, it is simply asking whether there is a better way.
Because when we die, surely our faith, our families, and our humanity should all have a place.
Copied from Obimodede Micheal Oluwafemi