PENULTIMATE Monday, tragedy struck at Egbu village in Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara State as guests returning from a wedding ceremony perished in a boat accident. According to reports, the accident occurred at midnight. Most of the guests from the villages of Sampi, Gakpan, Ebu and Kuchalu and Kpada had reportedly arrived the venue on motorbikes but resorted to a boat ride after the road leading into the village was cut off by heavy rain. The incident claimed 108 lives while some 146 persons were rescued. According to the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), preliminary investigations revealed that the vessel was overloaded, carrying over 250 persons and luggage, with the victims not wearing life jackets even as they travelled at about 2:30am.

Speaking with journalists in Ilorin after an on-the-spot assessment of the situation in Patigi communities, the NIWA managing director, Dr. George Moghalu, promised that all of those found culpable after investigations would be punished. According to Moghalu, there had been instances where boat operators were arrested, sent to prison, and their vessels either impounded or destroyed when considered not river-worthy. Noting that 90 percent of accidents on water occurred either in the night or very early in the morning, Moghalu said most of the vessels operating in the terrain lacked night navigational aids, making movement a risky venture, adding that the vessel in question carried passengers five times more than what it should. He added: “The operational time is between 6:00am and 6:00pm. People should wear life jackets before entering any vessel. The vessel must not be overloaded.” On his part, the director -general of the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), the agency saddled with investigating accidents on air, rail, marine and other modes of transport, Mr. Akin Olateru, said the agency had commenced investigation into the incident in line with the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) ACT 2022 and presidential directive.

Reacting to the incident, President Bola Tinubu, while expressing sadness over the incident, urged the Kwara State government and relevant federal agencies to look into the circumstances surrounding the boat accident. He promised that his administration would look into the challenges of inland water transportation in the country to ensure that the matter of safety and operational standards were strictly adhered to. Also, the President of ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Touray, condoled with families of the boat accident while the Kwara State governor, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, pledged to deliver 1,000 life jackets to support safe travels on water in Patigi. Speaking with journalists after a visit to the people of Kpada and Duro, the headquarters of Ebu and Dzakan settlements whose residents died in the incident, the governor said: “Measures will be taken as we are having discussions with Nigeria Inland Waterway Authority (NIWA) on enforcement of safety codes.” He added that the government would design and roll out some statewide standard operating procedures (SOPs) for water travel covering issues of boat serviceability, speed limits, loading limits and wearing of life jackets by all passengers, and send to the legislature a proposed legislation that imposes punishment for violations of the safety protocol.

The Patigi incident is indeed a disaster of monumental proportions. It is distressing that guests returning from a joyous occasion rowed into their deaths in the most terrible circumstance. Apparently, the boat in which they were travelling was overloaded but that, sadly, is the practice across the country. Just where are the regulatory agencies? And why did it have to take a tragedy of such huge proportion to prod them into laying out the challenges of water transport in the country, with promises to address them? To say the very least, we find the expressions of sympathy by the government and its agencies quite hypocritical, seeing that they contributed to the tragedy with their negligence. How do you create a terrible situation, then turn around to express vacuous sympathy? How do you fail to properly regulate public transport, then turn around to mourn the repercussions of that failure?

Surely, the Patigi tragedy is yet another indication of how everything about life and living in Nigeria has become an open invitation to disaster. Routine kidnapping, incessant attacks by bandits and killings everywhere for no reason at all have become the order of the day and life is literally meaningless in the country. Even with the deepening insecurity and the associated pains, the government typically behaves as if it does not care: it is not seen to be providing for the welfare and wellbeing of the citizenry in any concrete sense at any level. This explains why there are no good and viable infrastructure tor transport across the country, leaving citizens to make do with whatever contraptions they can come up with even if those endanger life. The boat that capsized was overloaded without passengers having access to life jackets. No sane or working society allows transport over water without the provision of life jackets for emergencies. Yet this is largely the situation in Nigeria as there are no worthwhile provisions for water transport in the country.

The idea has always been for the government to pretend that it cares about human life after every tragic loss of lives through water transport. It issues public statements sympathising with victims and their families, as the Kwara State government has done in the present case, without actually working to prevent a recurrence through the provision of better infrastructure in the transport sector. The way the life of citizens is treated with disdain is a callous representation of governance in the country. Government exists to attend to the welfare of citizens and this necessarily includes providing infrastructure for worthwhile living. We hope that governments at all levels in the country will henceforth focus on the people and their welfare by providing required infrastructure in order to prevent the perennial loss of lives on water and land in Nigeria.

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