Nigeria’s ‘king of funeral undertakers’ has spoken of his plans to take his fanfare burial business to the world stage.
Kelvin Chukwumaobi, founder and director of Apams Funeral Home, based in southeast Nigeria, said his modern “one-stop” shop, which employs over 280 full-time staff, has the capacity to take a cut of the funeral business abroad.
Chukwumaobi told local newspaper the Sun that he is “well aware” of how the industry works in the west, noting how he has already included western practices in his business.
“Today, if a client pays the right amount, we would organise everything for the client without any hassle,” he said.
Elements that distinguish his business from the competition, he noted, include a range of exotic vehicles, organising pallbearers and wreath bearers, personalised casket-making, professional criers and mourners, and even a fleet of helicopters – the latter of which have surprised and amazed the Nigerian public, he said.
He justified the use of paid criers and mourners, saying that “if a family doesn’t want to cry, we can help cry for them once they pay the right fee. But mind you, we are unique criers. Once we start crying, it becomes unstoppable, to the extent that people would begin to beg us not to cry again.”
The 41-year-old businessman, who a member of the Catholic Church’s Knights of St John international, added that the introduction of helicopter services was necessitated by the “bad network of roads” and “incessant kidnappings in the southeast”. It also fills what he called “a class-consciousness gap”.
“It is for those who want flamboyance, those who want to tell the world that they’ve arrived,” said Chukwumaobi. “They will tell you ‘Do you know that I buried my mother with a helicopter?’
“It is also for the convenience of the high class for quick service. Maybe they want to convey corpses from different parts of Nigeria to the east at a specified short time,” he added.
