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MORE bodies are being recovered from the Gbajibo River, Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State, after a wooden boat carrying 300 passengers capsized, on Tuesday night.
Marshals from The National Inland Water Ways, NIWA, National Emergency Management Agency NEMA and local divers have as at press time rescued 150 persons, recovered 70 bodies and search for missing passengers is on going .
Governor, Mohammed Bago of Niger State has expressed sadness over the incident and vowed to redouble efforts to enforce laws in line with water transportation to avoid frequent waste of lives and property.
Speaking on the incident, Lagos Area Manager of NIWA, Mrs. Sarat Braimah, said that the Boat set sail on an illegal journey as it set sail at 8.30pm which is against the Law of water transportation code.
Meanwhile, NIWA has attributed the unfortunate incident to flagrant disregard for transportation code by the boat operators such as overloading (the wooden boat carried 300 passengers), use of sub-standard boat which is a wooden carved boat without necessary navigational aids, lack of wearing of safety vests and night sailing which has been banned.
“NIWA just constituted river marshalls, who were posted to every state and Niger State in particular has 24 water marshalls while in Mokwa LGA, where the incident happened, they have four Marshalls.”
Braimah decried the prevalence of night sailing in the North despite its ban which she said was a major challenge for NIWA.
“NIWA will now make it 24-hour surveillance on waterways in that area in order to prevent reoccurrence.”
According to her, the recently gazetted transportation code launched by NIWA and cascaded to every state contains penalties for infractions of safety standards.
“Last month, NIWA was everywhere on sensitization of the citizens on this code. But, unfortunately, this tragic incident happened.
