Nigeria, Incessant boat accidents threaten water transport industry

Negligence, poor enforcement to blame

Nigeria’s huge invest­ment in the water transportation sector may go down the drain as rising incidence of boat mis­haps on the nation’s inland waterways is threatening its untapped potential with many seeing it as an unsafe means of transportation.

In the last one year, no fewer than 15 boat mishaps have hit the nation, claiming scores of lives and hurting several businesses. Available statistics show this translates to an aver­age of one accident per month.

Business experts have thus warned that the frequent boat capsizes, if not urgently ad­dressed, will scare away users of the waterways thus putting more pressure on the roads, while robbing the government the much needed revenue from water transport.

Maritime enthusiasts have since advocated that the high level of safety enforcement in the aviation sector should be extended to the waterways to improve safety and avoid un­necessary loss of human lives.

They explained that the ris­ing number of mishaps on the waterways is partly respon­sible for low patronage of commercial water transport in Nigeria, despite the nation’s vast coastline.

Investigations by Daily Sun show that about 90 per cent of the boat accidents occur at night when there is poor vis­ibility, a development that is compounded by the absence of lights to indicate the location of wrecks on waterways.

It was against the backdrop of the sector’s infrastructural deficit on the navigable chan­nels that the Federal Govern­ment, through the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), recently banned night travels on the waterways. But despite this ban, operators have regularly defied government policy and have relied on their over-rated knowledge of the water channels in daytime to move under the cover of dark­ness. Read more

Source: THE SUN

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