No fewer than 20 people are feared dead in an accident involving two passenger boats travelling from Andoni to Bonny island in the Andoni Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, local officials said on Wednesday, the first such accident to hit the region this year.
Erastus Awortu, chairman of the LGA, said the incident occurred on Tuesday night along the Andoni waterways.
“When we learned of the tragic development, we immediately dispatched our team to join the first responders on a rescue mission at the scene of the incident,” Awortu said in a statement, without providing further details about survivors.
This is the first such accident to hit the region this year, highlighting overcrowding and poor maintenance as key factors behind boat accidents in Nigerian waterways.
Boat accidents claimed nearly 200 lives across Nigeria last year, with a June disaster in Niger State resulting in the death of over 100 people due to an overloaded boat capsizing.
Expressing condolences to the affected families, Rivers Governor Siminalayi Fubara pledged to address threats to safe travel on sea routes to prevent such tragedies in the future.