Wedding guests among at least 103 dead in boating accident in Nigeria

More than 100 people died, many of them returning from a wedding ceremony, after a riverboat carrying them capsized in Nigeria in the early hours of Monday, according to residents and local police.

The boat was sailing on the Niger River in the western state of Kwara, according to a police spokesman, Okasanmi Ajayi, who said more than 100 people had been rescued and the search was ongoing.

“The boat capsized in complete darkness and we were not alerted until hours later,” said Mr. Ajayi. The death toll stood at 103 on Tuesday night and was likely to rise, he added.

Riverboat accidents are a recurring problem in Nigeria, a West African country where overloading, lax safety regulations, lack of life jackets and poor maintenance often lead to fatalities. Night sailing is banned nationwide, but the ban is still poorly enforced.

Authorities were yet to determine the cause of the accident on Monday, Mr Ajayi said. The victims included several families, including children, according to testimonies from local Residents.

Ibrahim Hassan, a resident of Ebbu village, where many of the wedding guests came from, said the area experienced heavy rainfall on Monday. A family known to Mr. Hassan has lost seven children, and two others are still missing as of Tuesday evening, he said in a telephone interview.

“We have lost many people, including women and children,” Mr Hassan added. “Our community will never be the same again.”

Nigerians often turn to river transport as an alternative to poorly maintained roads, especially during the rainy season.

The 4,200-kilometer-long Niger, the main river in West Africa, serves as an important regional trade route, rising far west in Guinea and flowing in a sweeping arc northeast into the Sahel, then southeast, and finally to the south, it flows into the Atlantic Ocean through the Niger Delta, in southeastern Nigeria. It is the third longest river in Africa, after the Nile and Congo.

Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, the Governor of Kwara State, said in a statement that the boat had been carrying people from several states, but it remained unclear whether all passengers had attended the wedding ceremony.

May 2021, at least 160 people died in a boating accident in about the same area on the Niger River. In May this year, at least 15 children died after a boat capsized in the northwestern state of Sokoto.