Niger Boat Mishap: 12 Bodies Recovered, 38 Rescued

Among the recovered bodies were 10 females and an eight year old boy.

Recall that last Saturday a boat mishap occurred in river Shiroro in Munya local government of Niger state.

Twelve bodies of victims of the recent boat mishap in Niger State have been recovered, while at least 38 persons were rescue.

The bodies were recovered with the assistance of a combined efforts of the marine police stationed at Shiroro dam and some local divers in the areas.

It was reliably gathered that all the recovered bodies have been buried at the river bank in Kuduru amides veiling and cry by the relatives of the victims.

The Niger state Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello who was represented at burial by the Chief of Staff to the Governor, Hon. Al- Amin Mikail Bmitosahi, described the incident as unfortunate and urged the people to see it as an act of God.

The Chief of Staff, accompanied by some top government functionaries from the area visited the scene of the Saturday mishap after traveling on boat for two and half hours for on the spot assessment of incident and to compensate with the families of the victims.

Bmitoshi said that the state government will set up what he called water ways transport agency with a view to regulate the activities of boats operators in the state.

He stressed that the government has discovered that all the boat operators in the state have no protective jackets for their passengers, stressing that “the government will make sure that no boat operators carry passengers without protective jackets when agency becomes operational”

“The state has witnessed too many boat mishaps. The government will soon come up with an agency that will regulate and monitor their activities so as to avoid some of these avoidable incidents on our water ways”.

He stated that the state government will buy protective jackets and give to these operators at subsidized rates, pointing out that “when that is done, no operator will be allowed to carry passengers without protective jackets”

It could be recalled that a boat carrying about 60 people, five cows, six sheep, eight bags of maize, four bags of rice and some other food items capsized on river after it broke into two, 30 minutes into the two hours journey to Zumba Market.