Man chooses BMW over coffin for fathers funeral
Funerals across the world have taken a strange turn from the traditional days of being buried or cremated, but one Nigerian man has gone to the extreme by burying his father in a brand new BMW.
According to Nigeria website NAIJ.com, a local man known as Azubuike, purchased the brand new car so he could send his father off in style at the local village graveyard in Mbosi, Anambra.
Azubuike is said to be particularly wealthy and given the hefty price tag that comes with a BMW is believed to have splashed quite a bit of cash on the flashy funeral.
However, he’s received some backlash for his decision, after a photo of the burial went viral on Facebook, with people in the poor region disappointed with his eagerness to “throw away money”.
While it’s one of the more creative funerals out there, the wealthy Nigerian isn’t the only one looking for alternative ways to send relatives into the afterlife with a bang.
There has been a noticeable trend in recent years to move away from the more sombre and traditional funerals of the past and instead embrace new types of burials and ceremonies.
Officials in China were forced to crack down on residents who were taking the idea of celebrating life to the extreme and hiring strippers to help increase the number of mourners at the funeral, because a high turnout means a sign of honour for the dead.
Elsewhere, a British funeral home made headlines for its ‘green’ crematorium, where bodies would be frozen at -200°C before being pulverised into powder.
Read more: New ‘deep freeze’ funerals could offer alternative to cremation
The environmentally friendly option is an alternative to cremation and sees the body is first placed in a machine and bathed with pure liquid nitrogen, freezing and cystallising it before it’s crushed into particles. The process is then repeated to remove any metals such as hip replacements or teeth fillings.
On a less gruesome note, others are simply choosing to liven up traditional ceremonies with sing-a-longs, dancing and bright colours rather than the traditional muted hues.
According to finder.com.au, some of the most popular funeral trends for 2018 include, green funerals, where your burial plot is turned into a flourishing garden; ‘new-age’ cremations, where your ashes are set into a diamond, mixed with tattoo ink, or placed in an hourglass; and cryonics, where your body is frozen and stored away safely in the hopes humans will one day discover how to bring the deceased back to life.
