At least 60 people drowned on Tuesday when a boat carrying hundreds of mostly women and children capsized on the Niger River in Nigeria, a spokesman for the local government said. At least 80 people were still missing by Wednesday as rescue workers scrambled to find more survivors.
The boat was carrying more than 300 passengers who were on their way to attend an annual religious celebration in Mokwa, a municipality in Nigeria’s northwestern Niger State, said Abdullahi Dakani, a spokesman for the Mokwa Local Government Authority.
More than 150 people had been rescued and treated at a clinic run by the Niger State Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday, said Habibu Wushishi, a spokesman for the state’s ministry of humanitarian affairs and disaster management. Ten survivors were found on Wednesday.
River boat accidents are a recurring issue in Nigeria, a West African nation where overloading, lax safety regulations, the absence of life jackets and poor maintenance often lead to deadly tragedies. Nighttime sailing is outlawed across the country, but the ban remains poorly enforced.
Images shared by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in Niger state show rescue workers and community members using canoes to search the sandy-colored river, pulling bodies out of the water.
The privately owned boat capsized between two small towns in the Mokwa Local Government Authority. The region is among more than a dozen in Nigeria still recovering from devastating flooding last month. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed and the country’s agriculture and infrastructure severely damaged. More than 1,000 people were killed across West and Central Africa.
In Mokwa, more than 2,100 people across 259 households were affected by the flooding last month, according to the United Nations’ migration agency. This year, the Niger River has seen the worst flooding since 2020, with water levels rising and threatening towns and villages along the riverbanks, according to humanitarian data analysis organization, Acaps.
The Niger River is the third-longest river in Africa, flowing through four countries from its source in Guinea and ending in Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
Traveling the river has become more dangerous as experts blame climate change for the increasing intensity of flooding and other extreme weather in Africa. Last year, more than 100 people died when a boat transporting wedding guests capsized. In 2021, at least 200 people died when a boat carrying passengers from Niger, a neighboring countrytaya777, capsized in Nigeria.