Bodies in the River: When safety laws are only slogans

By Lemmy Ughegbe, PhD

They were not adventurers at sea, but mourners heading to a burial: women, children and farmers crammed into a wooden boat, racing across the Niger River to pay respects.

On that day, tragedy struck when the overloaded vessel hit a submerged tree stump and capsized. At least sixty lives were lost, and dozens more remain unaccounted for. Ten survivors are still in critical condition.

For the grieving families waiting by the riverbanks, it was not an accident. It was carnage, predictable and preventable.

Their loved ones died not because of the unforgiving currents, but because a country of two hundred million has chosen neglect as policy. Nigeria insists on the rule “No Life Jacket, No Travel” yet fails to enforce it.

The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, established with fanfare by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023, promised to bring safety to the waterways. It even launched a campaign to distribute 42,000 life jackets. But publicity cannot substitute for reform. Posters do not keep boats afloat, and promises do not resuscitate drowning children.

In the first reports after the Niger mishap of 2 September 2025, officials said about twenty-nine people had died and more than fifty had been rescued. The BBC captured this early narrative with headlines such as “Dozens die after boat sinks” and “many still missing after three days.”

By the next day, the toll had risen to thirty-one. Then, as villagers and divers pulled more bodies from the river, the count passed sixty. This timeline is depressingly familiar. Every major boat accident in Nigeria begins with modest casualty figures, only for the numbers to climb steadily as rescue efforts falter and the accurate scale of loss emerges.

It reflects not only overcrowding but also the weakness of emergency response, where survival depends less on state capacity and more on luck and the bravery of locals.

For riverine communities, which depend on boats for daily transport, this was more than a tragedy. It was an indictment of a system that values rhetoric above responsibility. The Niger disaster is not the first of its kind.

Nor will it be the last, unless Nigeria learns to act. In June 2023, a boat carrying wedding guests in Kwara capsized, killing over one hundred. In 2021, more than one hundred and fifty people perished in Kebbi when an overloaded vessel split apart midstream. In Anambra, schoolchildren have drowned in local waterways after safety patrols failed to enforce life jacket rules.

Each time, the script is the same. Officials rush to the scene, condolences flow, committees are announced, and nothing changes. Then, weeks or months later, another boat sinks, and another community weeps, the cycle repeating.

What links these tragedies is not just water, but weak enforcement. Operators overload vessels to maximise profit. Safety inspections are absent. Law enforcement often looks the other way, sometimes collecting bribes. Rural communities, desperate for transport, climb aboard despite the risks because poor roads and insecurity leave them no choice.

Thus, death becomes normalised. The victims are primarily poor and rural, farmers, women and children, people without voice or influence. They do not trend for long on social media. They rarely receive justice. Their lives, it seems, are expendable. Why must Nigerians still gamble with death on rickety boats in the twenty-first century? The answer lies in chronic neglect of infrastructure.

Many communities along the Niger and Benue rivers have no alternative means of transportation. Roads are impassable or unfinished. Bridges are promised but never built. Public ferries are nonexistent. In the absence of state intervention, private operators dominate the waterways with unregulated boats.

This neglect has economic costs. The rivers should be lifelines for trade and agriculture. Instead, they are graveyards. Nigeria loses both lives and opportunities due to its inability to invest in safe, modern water transport.

Contrast this with countries like Bangladesh, which, despite being poorer, has regulated ferries and strict enforcement of safety laws. Or Kenya, which modernised its Lake Victoria transport with safer vessels and public awareness campaigns.

Nigeria, with more resources, has done far less. The much-repeated slogan, “No Life Jacket, No Travel,” illustrates the malaise. In theory, it is a good policy. In practice, it is a cruel joke. When the rule is flouted daily without consequence, it ceases to be law and becomes a mockery.

Even the distribution of 42,000 life jackets last year barely scratched the surface of the need. Nigeria has thousands of riverine communities and millions of regular boat users. Without systematic distribution, training, and monitoring, life jackets remain gestures rather than lifesaving tools. Worse still, corruption often diverts equipment away from those who need it most.

Behind every statistic lies a human story. A mother clinging to her child as the boat went under. A child who could not swim was pulled beneath by the current. Families waiting by the riverbank, hoping for miracles, only to receive bodies. These are not numbers. They are our neighbours, our kin, our fellow citizens.

When tragedies like this happen, officials often speak of destiny. But it was not destiny that overloaded the boat. It was greed, enabled by negligence. It was not fate that left passengers without life jackets. It was a failure to enforce the law.

If Nigeria is serious about preventing these tragedies, it must move from condolence to consequence. Life jacket laws must be enforced without exception. Operators who overload vessels or ignore safety protocols must lose their licences and face penalties. There must be compulsory registration and certification of all boats used for transport. Without regulation, the waterways will remain anarchic.

The government must invest in alternatives. Modern ferries and safer bridges are not luxuries; they are essentials for communities cut off by rivers. Development must not stop at Abuja or Lagos; it must reach the villages where lives are lost silently.

There must be public education. Communities must be taught water safety, swimming basics and the importance of life jackets. Awareness saves lives. Accountability must also be institutional. Every boat tragedy should trigger an investigation, not by ad hoc committees, but by standing safety boards empowered to sanction and reform. Without accountability, grief will be repeated.

The Niger boat tragedy is more than a local story. It is a national mirror. It reflects a Nigeria where lives are cheap, where safety laws are empty, and where preventable deaths persist. It reflects a political class more concerned with campaigns and conferences than with whether citizens can cross rivers safely.

A nation is judged not only by how it celebrates its heroes, but by how it protects its ordinary citizens. Nigeria has demonstrated that it can mobilise resources for rallies, sports, and international image laundering. Why can it not mobilise to save rural mothers and children from drowning?

Ultimately, the question is straightforward. How many more must die before we act? How many bodies must the river claim before prevention is valued over condolence? If we cannot guarantee safe passage across our rivers, if we cannot prevent children from drowning in overcrowded boats, then what hope can we claim of nationhood?

The Niger tragedy must not fade into memory. It must be the line in the sand where Nigeria chooses life over neglect, enforcement over excuses, and dignity over death. For if we cannot protect our people from drowning on their way to bury the dead, then truly, the soul of our nation is itself drowning.

Lemmy Ughegbe writes from Abuja

Email address: [email protected]

Phone number: +2348069716645