Olabide Adaramola
Twelve bodies, among them 10 females and an eight year old boy from the scene of Saturday’s commercial boat accident in river Shiroro, in Munya local government area of Niger state, have been recovered.
The bodies of the victims were recovered with the help of combined efforts of the marine police stationed at Shiroro dam and some local divers in the areas.
All the recovered bodies have been buried at the river bank in Kuduru amidst waillings, cries and opened display of sense of loss by the bereaved relatives and friends of the deceased victims.
National Wire also learnt that while the nine Christians among the dead were buried separately beside one another, their counterparts moslem adherents who suffered similar fate were also buried there separately.
Meanwhie, the state Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello who was represented at the burial by his chief of staff, Hon. Mikhail Bmitoshai, described the incidence as not only regrettable but unfortunate and urged the people to it take it as an act of God.
The chief of staff, accompanied by some top government functionaries from the area visited the scene of the last Saturday,s mishap after traveling on boat for about two and half hours for on the spot assessment of incident and to condole with the families of the deceased victims of the ill- fated passenger boat.
The government delegations arrivednthe communities when villagers were burring the deceased.
Bmitoshi said that the state government will set up what he called water ways transport agency with a view to regulate the activities of boats operators in the state.
He empasized that the government has observed with dismay that all the commercial boats operators in parts of the state have no protective jackets for their passengers, stressing that “the government will make sure that henceforth, no boat operators in the state picked passengers at river banks without giving them protective jackets individually when the agency becomes operational”
“The state has witnessed too many boat mishaps. The government will soon come up with an agency that will regulate and monitor their activities so as to avoid some of these avoidable incidents on our water ways”, he lamented .
He disclosed further that the state government will soon buy protective jackets and distribute it to these boats operators at subsidized rates, pointing out that “when that is done, no operator will be allowed to carry passengers without protective jackets”.
It could be recalled that a boat carrying about 60 people, five cows, six sheep, eight bags of maize, four bags of rice and some other food items capsized on river after it broke into two, 30 minutes into the two hours journey to Zumba market.
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