Dead are 3 Final Year Medical Students In Calabar, 103 Passengers In Kwara

Dr. George Moghalu
Managing Director, NIWA

The National Inland Waterways Authority, NIWA is either lacking capacity or suffering from gross managerial incompetence, indifferent to national pains and anguish which families have been plunged following numerous deaths and burials families have had the misfortune to bear as a result NIWA’s apparent failure to efficiently manage and exert its “Authority” over Nigeria’s expansive waterways.

If there is anything NIWA is popular for it is the quick press releases after boat accidents which rarely occur without loss of life. This reactive ability if converted to proactive deployment would benefit Nigeria and indeed Nigerians more instead of the “medicine after death” which the regular media statements issued best portrays.

Within the month of June 2023, two fatal boat accidents in Kwara and Cross Rivers states respectively claimed 106 lives.

Of monumental tragic proportion is the death of 103 boat passengers on June 12, 2023, along the Jebba Lake channel in the Lafiagi-Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara State.

Few weeks after that Kwara incident, 3 medical students, two from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and one from the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State who were in the Cross River capital city for Nigeria Medical Students games died when their boat capsized along the Marina Resort waterways in Calabar.

Medicine is not an everyday course. One must of necessity be academically brilliant to be admitted to read medicine in any Nigerian university.

The anguish of the parents of these final year medical students in avoidable circumstances is therefore better imagined than experienced.

If there is any Agency of government to hold responsible for the death of the 103 boat passengers and 3 medical students it is NIWA because it is part of NIWA’s mandate to keep Nigeria’s waterways safe.

Lamenting the death of the 3 medical students, the leadership of the Nigerian Medical Students Association (NIMSA) blamed the management of Marina Resort Calabar, for the unfortunate boat accident.

Bemoaning the painful deaths, Egim Egbe, national president of NIMSA, said “This ugly, avoidable and extremely traumatizing incident causing so much anguish to the medical students’ community nationwide was a result of negligence. It is as a result of incompetence and the lackadaisical attitude of the crew members and the management of Marina Resort,” Egbe said.

Is NIWA aware of the Marina Resort in Calabar? How well are operational activities at the Resort monitored and supervised by NIWA?

Deaths

Preceding the June accidents in Kwara and Calabar, 20 farmers were reported dead after a boat carrying over 100 farmers capsized in the Koko/Besse Local Government Area of Kebbi State. This was is January 2023.

In May 2013, 15 persons reportedly died after a boat carrying many passengers capsized in Shagari Dam, Sokoto State.

Late last year, sources disclosed that a total of 29 passengers lost their lives in 2022 compared to over 100 in 2021 along the Malale Waterfront in Borgu Local Government Area of Niger State.

Reports have it that on May 26, 2021, 160 passengers died in a boat mishap that happened in Kebbi State.

In April 2021, no fewer than 29 children from Gidan Magana village in Sokoto drowned in the Shagari River when their vessel capsized on their way to fetch firewood for their families.

Apart from these documented deaths, there are many more deaths on Nigeria’s uncharted waterways that are neither reported nor captured even by NIWA.

It is on record that in July 2022, a passenger boat enroute Marina from Ikorodu capsized on the waterways killing two people while only four bodies were recovered from a boat mishap involving 16 passengers in the Ojo area of Lagos.

NIWAS is very quick, like keypad tigers, to attribute these unfortunate deaths to disregard for regulations and guidelines by boat operators. Unlike social media warriors who often admit/apologies for their errors/failures, NIWA has never admitted failure nor taken blame neither has the agency taken responsibility for the numerous lapses, loses and woes experienced by boat users in the country.

Few days after the Kwara tragedy, NIWA characteristically issued a statement saying “We will in line with extant laws and regulations, investigate this callous incident and prosecute those found culpable. NIWA as an Authority will not fold its arms and allow reckless boat operators flaunting our safety guidelines and killing innocent commuters.”

In its languid reactive manner, NIWA said after the Calabar boat incident that claimed the lives of 3 final year medial students “We feel very sad to announce that NIWA’s search and rescue team recovered the three missing dead bodies of the medical students that were involved in the boat mishap on Saturday 24th June 2023 in Calabar Waterways”.

“NIWA has since arrested the operators and sealed the Jetty as the boat is not duly registered with NIWA and the Jetty is also not approved by NIWA” the Agency said.

Boat not registered, jetty not approved but in use while NIWA looks on? Why was the jetty not sealed nor boat users warned of its status prior to the unfortunate incident?

Who do we blame in this unfolding blame game? Is corruption not woven into these developments? Is somebody somewhere not collecting money from boat operators in the Calabar waterfronts?

Undoubtedly, there are countless unregistered boats and unapproved jetties in 28 of  Nigeria’s 36 states that can be accessed through water not to talk of the five neighbouring countries of Nigeria–Benin Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic accessible by water from Nigeria.

Supervision and regulation of water transportation by NIWA are not far from zero if statistics and figures count.

Regrettably, the Federal Government has been very disturbingly quiet as NIWA spectacularly fails in its regulatory functions. As it is in Nigerian refineries where people get paid, sent on courses and promoted when not a barrel of crude oil is refined, NIWA’s management and staff enjoy official pecks even as families are regularly thrown into mourning of loved ones who die from boat accidents.

Where there are no sanctions, sack nor queries impunity and recklessness reigns.

Considering the inter Agency rivalry and pursuit of revenue by government agencies, is NIWA entirely culpable?

The Act establishing NIWA states that the Agency is to, among other things, design ferry routes; carry out surveys, remove and receive derelicts, wrecks and other obstructions from inland waterways; operate ferry services within the inland waterways; undertake installation and maintenance of lights, buoys and all navigational aids along water channels and banks in Nigeria.

How many other Agencies under the Federal Ministry of Transportation, FMOT, which suprintends NIWA are carrying out the above functions? Therein lies our national malaise and undoing.

Autonomy

NIWA recently exited the Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) when its Internally Generated Revenue galloped from N600m to N1 billion.

Managing Director of NIWA, Dr. George Moghalu assures “NIWA leaving IPPIS is a good thing, it is a basis for us to work harder and get more money because if we cannot pay ourselves, we would starve, but if we want to get our salaries we would work harder”.

Whether NIWA’s autonomy means working harder to get more money or prioritizing safe navigation and making the waterways safer and more attractive for travels remains to be seen.

Efforts to get clarifications on NIWA’s operations sent to the General Manager Corporate affairs received no response even as we still try to hear from the management on issues affecting it operations.