The National Inland Waterways Authority has sent an emergency rescue team to search for missing passengers of a merchant boat which capsized in Niger State on Friday.

The Managing Director of NIWA, Bola Oyebamiji, said this in a statement on Friday.

According to Mr Oyebamiji, the boat capsized in the waters of Ebe community in the Kupa South Local Government Area of the state in the early hours of Friday.

He said, “Preliminary findings by NIWA indicate that the wooden boat was travelling to the Katcha market in Niger State when it suddenly went under due to poor visibility and overloading. There are no details of lives lost so far. The wooden craft, operated by an unknown boat operator, left with an unsubstantiated number of passengers, from an abandoned jetty at 1.00 a.m. on Friday morning with intent to beat NIWA’ s tight surveillance on  waterways. To unravel the cause of the accident, NIWA has set up an investigation panel to ascertain the real cause of the accident, the total number of passengers onboard and the owner of the craft.’’

He noted that the top management team of NIWA was leading and coordinating the rescue operations as well as making sure that survivors of the boat accident would receive urgent medical attention.

He said that NIWA would, in due course, release more information on the incident.

He added, “We are shocked by this incident despite all our efforts to sensitise Nigerians about safety measures on waterways. It was not quite long when we unveiled the National Waterways Transportation Code, visited communities and stakeholders to make them have a buy-in to our strategy to curb accidents on water. We also discussed with state governors in Nigeria to partner with us in providing safe water crafts to help move people and goods safely across our waterways but now, sadly, this has happened. NIWA will investigate this accident and  prosecute the boat captain and the owner for deliberate disobedience to the extant law on waterways.’’

However, the Director-General of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, Abdullahi Baba-Arah, said that 22 bodies were recovered and eight persons rescued after the boat capiszed in Minna on Thursday. Mr Baba-Arah further siad that the boat, sailing from Ebe Community in Kogi state with about 50 passengers on board, was heading to Katcha market when the incident occurred around 2.00 a.m. on Thursday.

(NAN)