The avoidable and untimely demise of ace Nollywood actor, John Paul Odonwodo, alias Junior Pope and others on April 10, 2024 in a boat mishap on Anam River, Anambra State, during a filming operation brought back to the front burner the need for governments at all levels to pay closer attention to the safety needs of users of river transportation services.
Junior Pope, the immediate past Vice President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, AGN, could have easily been rescued if the right things had been done, especially ensuring that passengers on board their outboard engine-propelled boat wore floaters or life jackets.
Our waterfronts and waterways are among the many gaping ungoverned spaces in Nigeria, a phenomenon of government inefficiency that puts the lives and property of the citizens at risk. These ungoverned spaces, which exist in the forests, farmlands, inner urban cities and our riverine precincts, are places where crime and lawlessness thrive because government is unable to assert its power of maintaining law and order and protecting the people.
It is a shame that our waterfronts and waterways remain largely ungoverned despite existence of numerous government agencies at federal and state levels. For instance, we have the Federal Ministry of Water Resources as well as Federal Ministry of Transportation. Under these ministries, there are dedicated agencies such as National Inland Waterways Authority, NIWA; Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA; and others.
We also have the Nigerian Navy and the amphibious units of the Nigeria Police and others. Some states also have cognate outfits, or they should have, because of their abundant aquatic endowments.
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But, in spite of all these, our waterways and waterfronts are largely unregulated or improperly governed, which is why they are highly accident-prone. A visit to any waterfront and jetty in the riverine parts of the country shows that the vessels used to convey people lack safety standards. Many of them are in deplorable conditions. Those who operate them are laws unto themselves. Worst of all, most of them do not give their passengers life jackets. These are things that good governance addresses.
As a result, Nigeria reaps grim harvests of deaths annually. For instance, according to figures by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, ICIR, we lost 1,204 lives between January 2018 and October 2023, with most of the casualties recorded in Niger (275), Kebbi (144), Kwara (125), Sokoto (117), Lagos (92), Anambra (80), Bauchi (76), Kano (45) and Bayelsa (40).
We must be reminded that there are Nigerians who have no other means of transportation other than their waterways. They, too, deserve the protection of government, whose primary job is to ensure that vessels meet standards, operators conform to regulation, safety measures are not compromised those who flout the rules are punished.
Make our waterways safer.
