29 persons have been confirmed dead in a boat accident that occurred on Tuesday, September 2, in Niger State.
The tragic incident took place around noon in Gausawa, a community within Borgu Local Government Area. The ill-fated boat was carrying about 90 passengers, including women and children, who were traveling to another community to attend a condolence visit.
Preliminary findings linked the accident to overloading and the boat’s collision with a tree stump. None of the passengers were wearing life jackets at the time of the mishap.
A source within the Ministry of Transport, who preferred to remain anonymous, stressed that lives could have been saved if safety measures had been observed.
The source said, “The passengers were obviously not wearing life jackets, because if they had been, more, if not all of them would have survived the accident. Borgu is very far and a lot of these passengers do not like to wear the life jackets for reasons best known to them.”
As of the time of this report, authorities had recovered 29 bodies, while 50 survivors were rescued. Two people remain unaccounted for.
Confirming the development, the Director General of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, NSEMA, Abdullahi Baba-Arah, said search and rescue operations were ongoing.
He explained, “NSEMA has received a report of boat mishap incident at a community called Gausawa in Malale area/ward of Borgu LGA. According to our desk officer who led the search and rescue operations, the boat took off from a community called Tugan Sule in Shagunu ward with 90 people on board which includes women and children on the boat heading to Dugga for a condolence visit.”
Baba-Arah further stated, “The incident happened yesterday, 2nd September 2025 at about 11:30am and the cause was attributed to overloading and collision with a tree stomp. As at the time of filling this report 29 dead bodies have been recovered with 50 persons rescued alive while 2 people are still missing. Search and rescue operations are still on going for possible recovery of missing persons.”
This marks the second boat mishap recorded in Niger State in 2025. The first, which occurred in July, was also linked to a collision with a tree stump.
It will be recalled that following the devastating flood disaster that claimed over 200 lives, the National Inland Waterways Authority, NIWA, had distributed life jackets in Mokwa to enhance safety on waterways.
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