Mass murder on River Niger

“As of today, the combined efforts of NEMA, Kogi State Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross have recovered 54 bodies. Unfortunately, there was no manifest for the boat, which makes it difficult to confirm the exact number of passengers. The journey took place at night, and none of the passengers had life jackets.” The Head of Operations of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Kogi State, Justin Uwazuruonye, told the above to newsmen on Saturday. He was speaking about last Friday’s boat accident involving about 200 women and labourers.

A folk poet says “the young goat fled the slaughterers/ He took shelter among the butchers./ The couscous fled those who sprinkle sauce over it,/ It took shelter among those who eat it.” People who were running away from hunger and poverty in one place ended up buying death on the waterways at another end. That is what happened to the casualties of that accident who were women on their way to a market in Niger State. Their boat sank into River Niger with all in it. Nigeria is still searching for the remains of many.

Like Wole Soyinka’s metal on concrete, reports of that accident on the Niger jarred the heart. We still do not know the exact number of those who sank with that sepulchral boat. What we know is that all of the dead had no names – they are just a number, nameless. People who have names – big names – don’t travel in deathly canoes; they don’t paddle coffins to their places of trade.

Overcrowded boats are cemeteries in motion. Two hundred people crammed into a creaky bowl of wood is mass murder – or mass suicide. Many of the boats are old and decrepit; they are very well known disasters waiting to happen. Yet, people pay to use them because they are the only affordable means of transportation available to those who use them.

We may not trust the authorities in big things, but in ‘small’ talks like how to save ourselves from recalcitrant death, we must listen. The Nigeria Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) recently rolled out a safety protocol. Obey them. They say do not be lured into boarding wooden boats whose expiry dates are in the last century. They say do not travel on water without life vests. They say the flip side of not wearing life vests is wearing aprons of death.

Murderers are not just felons with swords and daggers. Operators of boats without care are killers. They maximize profit and overload boats. They use corner-corner creek routes and compromise safety; they offend the law and dodge regulators; they break rules and avoid water marshals. They run faster than their destinies and collide with tragedy. They mass-kill the helpless who trust them with their lives.

How do we say enough is enough? Can we appeal to the big men from that axis of tragedy to intervene with their money? Is it not possible for the rich to replace every aged wooden boat with modern watercraft that won’t crack and perish under the weight of struggling children, women and labourers? Can the powerful channel monies currently being spent on buying wheelbarrows into buying life jackets for every household that must travel on water? Can radio and television stations in these areas and in other places mount a campaign against suicidal cruises on the waterways? Can we make this avoidable accident the very last on our waterways?

No one wants to die. The hundreds who have perished in boat accidents this year alone in that axis wanted to live. Over 100 died in October in Mokwa, Niger State; more than 40 died somewhere in Zamfara State in September. The latest casualties were on their way to farm work or to buy and sell in a market. They were looking for what to eat. May we not run from the house of hunger to the house of stupid death. May the souls of the dead Rest In Peace. May the living learn from the dead.

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