Fifteen children died and several others were rescued after their crowded boat capsized on a river.
A local Nigerian official confirmed that a tragic incident claimed the lives of 15 children, after their boat capsized in the Shagari River in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto state. The children were headed to the bush to collect firewood on Tuesday, May 9, when their overloaded boat overturned, according to Shagari district political administrator Aliyu Abubakar.
Abubakar reported that the boat carrying the children capsized in the middle of the river. He also stated that local rescue teams recovered 15 bodies, consisting of 13 girls and two boys, who were later buried in the village.
Abubakar told CNN that divers rescued 21 of the 36 people on board the vessel alive, while 15 didn’t make it.
River accidents are common in Nigeria, often resulting from overloaded boats, inadequate maintenance of the vessels, heavy flooding during the rainy season, and a lack of safety regulations.
This is not the first occurrence of such a tragedy in the area. In April the previous year, a similar accident in the same river took the lives of 29 people, including five children, from the neighboring Gidan Magana village in Sokoto, who were also on their way to collect firewood.
In October 2022, at least 76 people died when their boat capsized during massive flooding in the rainy season in southeast Anambra State.
In May 2021, one of Nigeria’s worst river disasters occurred when a boat transporting people to the market broke apart, with more than 150 people missing and only 20 rescued. To mitigate these incidents, Nigeria’s waterways authority has attempted to ban night-time sailing on rivers and made overloading vessels a criminal offense, but operators frequently disregard these rules.
