By Suyi Ayodele

December 15, 1970, was a terrible day in South Korea. The Asian country lost 362 of its citizens to a boat mishap. The South Korean ferryboat known as Namyoung, sailed out of Busan River, in Seogwipo-si, on December 12, 1970. It had on board, 338 passengers and crew members, heading towards Seongsampo Port in Jeju Island. The boat, according to the report, sank about 28 nautical miles (approximately 45 kilometres) away from Yeosu and Jeollanam.

The sinking of the ferryboat was blamed on overloading. It was said to have 150 crates of tangerines on one side, which made it tilted. The entire cargo capacity of Namyoung was 150 tons. But as at the time it sank, it had 500 tons! The ancient wisdom states: “Greed fills the boat, but the sea claims the excess.” That was the fate Namyoung suffered. The sea ate up 326 of its passengers and the cargo therein because, as the elders are wont to say: “A boat that carries too much sinks under its own weight!”

The death that will kill a farmer, our elders say, lives right at the tips of the yam heaps. Every profession has its hazards. Life on the river, they say, is the easiest. There are many Nigerians today, especially our brothers and sisters along the coastlines, who depend on the river. The river is their life. I watched some lads in the river at Gbelebu, an Izon community in Edo State, about three weeks ago. Daring children! They were even playing games inside the river and were happy about it.

I equally noticed the various wooden boats by the bank of the river. Across the river, my friend pointed to Ijaw Arogbo in Ondo State. The community people, he announced, travelled about in those boats. A close look at the wood called boats, fitted with something that looked like grinding machines, were metal patches used in sealing the holes in the boats. Yet people use them as means of transportation, forgetting the injunction that “trusting an old boat is gambling with unseen leaks.”

My appreciation of those ‘boats’ I saw by the Gbelebu River rose after the news filtered in on Friday, November 29, 2024, about another boat mishap in Kogi State end of the Niger River. Yes, the boats I saw at Gbelebu are smaller ones. But no one can tell how many passengers they carry. What are their passenger capacities in the first instance? Who assesses their water-worthiness? There was no presence of any official of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), in that locality. The people are their safety officers; they are the regulators and authority. God forbid any mishap in that axis!

In the last three months, over 150 Nigerians have been lost to boat accidents. On September 16, 2024, over 40 passengers of an ill-fated boat died in Gummi Local Government area of Zamfara State. The seafarers were sailing on the Bakin Kasuwa River in Uban Dakawaki town, when their boat capsized. Till date, no one knows the size of the boat, its capacity and any safety measure(s) put in place by the operators. All we know is that over 40 bodies were recovered. How many are truly missing?

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Barely a month later, on October 4, 2024, another accident happened on the Gbajiibo River in Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State. A boat, loaded with 300 passengers, capsized. By the first rescue operation, 70 bodies were recovered, with 150 others rescued alive. It was gathered that because the accident happened at night, rescue operations became hampered. The fate of the remaining 80 passengers is yet to be ascertained! Officials of the NIWA and the National Emergency Agency (NEMA), were said to be “searching for the remaining missing passengers.”

One interesting thing about the Mokwa boat tragedy is that the accident happened at about 8.30pm, a time such a wooden boat without any navigational equipment, should not be sailing! That is in tandem with the saying of the old men of Greece that “A boat without light courts the shadows of the deep.” The water transportation code set out for operators of such boats stipulate that no such boat should be in the waters at night. The question is, who authorised that movement? Where were the water marshals and those in charge of safety on the waters?

Lagos Area Manager of NIWA, Mrs. Sarat Braimah, while commenting on the incident, said the four water marshals deployed to the Gbajiibo River where the incident occurred had already closed from duty for the day and left. NIWA, under the present management, has done a lot to bring sanity to water travel in Nigeria. But I suggest a 24-hour deployment of marshals. People disobey laws, including transportation codes put in place for their own safety. They misbehave big time under the cover of darkness and commit suicide. That is why water marshals should be on duty day and night.

Nigerians don’t learn from histories, no matter how sordid they are. While the nation was still smarting from the Mokwa incident, another boat mishap took place in Kogi State on Friday, November 29, 2024. The capsized boat was said to be carrying marketers from Eve in Kogi State to Katcha Market in Niger State. Over 22 dead bodies were recovered after the initial rescue operation, and many more are still missing!

There are common denominators with all the boat mishaps recorded above and many others not mentioned here. The boats are all wooden, old, rickety and overloaded. Again, the operators flagrantly disobeyed navigational codes! But, most saddening is the culpability of the passengers, dead or alive, who boarded the boats with the ancient mentality of soole, the cheap means of transportation whereby passengers circumvent the laws.

Yes, life gives cheaper alternatives! But, most often than not, the cheaper alternative also comes with its own risks! How are we sure that the over 300 passengers cramped in a rickety wooden boat on the river were not victims of soole mentality! Why on earth would anyone subscribe to the idea of being parked like a sardine in a boat? What level of poverty would make people take unnecessary risks? Why would anyone be in a boat without any navigational equipment at night? More importantly, why would anyone venture near the water without a life jacket?

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Braimah, the Lagos NIWA boss, said that night sailing by rickety wooden boats with overloaded passengers is a major problem of the body. It is a problem that NIWA should confront frontally. NIWA should step up its game and ensure that the ban on night sailing is enforced with grave consequences for offenders.

Enough of countless deaths on our waters! There are senators, members of House of Representatives and legislators from the various states, Houses of Assembly, who have those riverine areas as their constituencies. It is not just enough to answer “Distinguished” as an appellation when the bearer cannot do anything distinguishable. There is nothing “Honourable” if the one who carries the prefix is not honourable enough to attend to the basic needs of his or her constituents.

We have had “Constituency Project” budgets running into billions of Naira, approved for lawmakers at all levels. Can we appeal to them to stop providing only grinding machines, wheelbarrows and shoe-repairing kits?

How much does it cost to purchase modern boats built with local fibre and equipped with navigational equipment? Is it not cheaper, more honourable and humane to keep these locals alive with good boats than to organise a mass burial for them? We need to beg our politicians to learn how to set their priorities right.

Every community has peculiar needs. The peculiar need of a fishing community and water dwellers is a good means of transportation. The people who live and get their sustenance from the waters probably don’t need Okadas (motorcycles). Good boats and other safety kits would be of more delight to them. The “Distinguished” and the “Honourables” have enough constituency project funds to take care of that. Happily, it is not something they will be doing frequently!

It is a pity, and most unfortunate, that thousands of lives have been lost to boat mishaps as we have in road accidents. NIWA and other agencies can put all the measures in place to ensure safety on the waters. They can also run as many jingles and safety awareness campaigns as they can. But the responsibility to live is that of the people.

It is suicidal for anyone to board a rickety boat and be cramped with hundreds of others in the manners we had in those mishaps. It amounts to sheer personal irresponsibility for anyone to be on a boat without a safety vest! “A life jacket”, the saying goes, “doesn’t judge the depth of the water.” This underscores the importance of safety.

It is equally unthinkable that anyone would agree to be shipped in a boat at night without any navigational equipment! Dangers loom at night hence the seamen of old state that “the sea at night hides its teeth; only the cautious will see the dawn.”

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Some of the boats that capsized were said to have taken to the creek routes to dodge the water marshals, and in the process, collided with trees and other objects. It will be difficult to blame the government and its agencies for that!

We need that reorientation to get to know that in the search for cheap alternatives, Nigerians must place their personal safety concerns as priority. We need to collectively stop the death on old wooden boats because “an old boat may remember the sea, but its cracks betray the journey.”

Nigerians must consciously put an end to the killing soole mentality. Agreed that the government has failed in its responsibilities towards the citizenry, however, it is unfathomable that anyone would embark on a night journey on the sea in a bad boat without safety codes and measures! This is what my people call: ó kù sí owó olè, ó kù sí owó olóko (both the thief and the farmer are guilty).

Nations learn from past mistakes South Korea, again, recorded yet another boat accident on April 16, 2014. In the accident involving a ferryboat MV Sewol, 304 passengers out of the 476 onboard the boat perished. Of the figures, 250 were said to be students of the Danwon High School in Ansan. This accident led to the enactment of the Serious Accident Punishment Act (SAPA), which imposes accountability on the safety culture of corporate bodies, operators of water transportation inclusive.

SAPA generally, is not all about maritime safety, its principles, letters and application of the safety accountability spelt out hold company executives accountable for any mishap that occurs at the workplace due to negligence.

By the Act, if workers aboard a ship are injured due to negligence in safety protocols and procedures, the act could be invoked and the erring companies punished. This Act and its application would do us well in Nigeria, where everyone feels that he can get away with anything.

But above all, everybody should be encouraged to obey the laws. And the lawmakers themselves must be ready to enforce them. If the laws on safety on our waterways are not adequate, the idle lawmakers in Abuja should be asked to make more laws like the South Korea’s SAPA

May Nigeria never experience untimely and avoidable deaths as we have had in the scenarios above. May God grant the souls of the departed rest.