Hammed Shittu
3 November 2009
Ilorin — Forty corpses have so far been recovered while 15 people are still missing in a boat mishap that occurred along Nano river, boundary between Bukuro in Baruten local government council area of Kwara state and Yariwondo village in Republic of Benin just as the state government confirmed that no indigene of the state was involved in the incident.
Already, the state governor, Dr. Bukola Saraki, has sent a delegation led by his Special Adviser on Emergency and Relief Services, Alhaji Suleyman Yusuf, to ascertain the level of the situation at the scene of the incident. The chairman of Baruten local government area, Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, who spoke at a press conference in Ilorin yesterday on the incident said though the incident was sympathetic and sad, both the local and state government would do everything possible to assist those that might have been affected by the incident.
According to him, " the incident occurred due to the fault developed by the boat carrying the school pupils and the market women on the river but the other boat coming behind wanted to rescue the people inside the faulty one and at the end, the boat capsized."
He said it was at this point that the villagers, especially the fishermen rushed to the scene of the incident on a rescue mission and the remains of 40 of the victims were recovered from the river while 15 people were reportedly still missing at the time of filling this report. "As the chairman and the chief security officer of my local government area, I wish to state without any iota of truth of contradictions that all reports made available to us so far have not indicated that a single citizen from my local government area or Nigeria was involved in the sad incident, he added. The ugly incident is believed to have claimed 50 lives.
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