Nigeria’s river deaths are not accidents. They are policy failures with a boat attached

The latest tragedy on Nigeria’s waterways came, as these things so often do, with a grim sense of familiarity. In Jigawa state, a wooden canoe capsized on Sunday with about 40 people on board, mostly female farmers and labourers. Twenty-three passengers were rescued alive, nine bodies have been recovered, and search-and-rescue teams are still looking for the missing.

That is the ugly rhythm of boat disasters in Nigeria: the water takes lives, officials promise action, campaigners point to shortages, and the next accident arrives anyway. This year alone, more than 55 people have already died in boat accidents. Last month, 12 people were killed on the River Benue, among them a pregnant woman and six children. Earlier in the year, 14 died in Kebbi state after a wedding journey ended in another capsized boat. The setting changes. The negligence does not.

For millions of Nigerians, especially in rural areas, waterways are not a romantic alternative to the road. They are the road. Villages sit on or near rivers, bridges are scarce, roads are poor, and wooden boats remain the only practical way to reach markets, relatives or the nearest glimpse of the wider world. That dependence makes the failures more cruel, not less. When transport is unavoidable, safety should be non-negotiable. In Nigeria, it is treated more like an optional luxury.

The causes are depressingly ordinary. Boats are overcrowded. They are old and flimsy. Life jackets are missing, or available in such small numbers that the idea of universal use becomes a joke. Mallam Sala Altine, the Sarkin Ruwan Shiroro in Niger state, says boats on Shiroro Lake often carry well over 100 passengers, yet there are only enough jackets for 10 people, sometimes fewer. He says the authorities have promised supplies before, but what eventually arrived was tiny. He wants everyone to wear a jacket. The problem is that he cannot hand one to everyone.

There is, naturally, an official explanation for this state of affairs. Ibrahim Husseini of the National Emergency Management Agency in Niger state says the government does provide life jackets, but many riverine residents think they do not need them or find them uncomfortable. That may be true. It is also a convenient way to shift responsibility onto passengers while the state keeps its distance. Women are especially exposed, since many do not swim and are often the ones travelling to weddings or carrying goods to market.

The rules themselves are not exactly a mystery. The Water Transport Code was passed in January 2023, and after a deadly accident in Niger state last year the National Inland Waterways Authority said life jackets were compulsory nationwide and that commercial boats should only pick up passengers at recognised and registered points. Timothy Iwuagwu, president of the Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria, says the law already requires life jackets on large bodies of water where people cannot easily swim ashore. His point is simple: a regulation without enforcement is paperwork dressed up as policy.

The rest of the safety chain is equally weak. Iwuagwu says most local boat operators are not trained or licensed, and many do not understand the water they work on — the waves, the tide, the current. He also says passenger limits should be clearly marked to prevent overloading, which is one of the usual reasons boats overturn. Even where jackets exist, they are often poor quality and passengers do not know how to put them on properly. On some waterways, tree stumps left behind by years of logging, and poor dredging that leaves roots in place, become hidden hazards when the tide rises.

The federal government has acknowledged at least part of the problem. Last year, Minister of Marine and Blue Economy Adegboyega Oyetola said it was time to break with outdated practices and abandon wooden boats as the future of water transport. He said thousands of life jackets had been supplied to riverine states, but also admitted that jackets alone cannot make travel safe if the boats themselves remain unsafe. He urged state governments to back fibre and aluminium vessels, which are stronger and more durable than traditional wooden ones.

If one wants to see what improvement looks like, Lagos offers the answer. Nigeria’s biggest city, with roughly a third of its area covered by water, has long relied on ferries because traffic on land is its own special form of punishment. Yet the city has sharply reduced fatalities. Laswa recorded 92 boat deaths between January 2018 and October 2023, but only one in 2024, six in 2025 and none so far this year.

Abdulbaq Balogun, managing director of Lagos Ferry Services, says the turnaround came from standard boats and life jackets, dredged channels, water guards at every jetty and terminal, and trained, licensed operators. He says rescue boats are deployed quickly when accidents or mechanical faults occur. The state also built up a large stock of life jackets and distributed them to operators, while public awareness campaigns have made passengers more willing to ask for one before boarding.

That is the uncomfortable comparison. Nigeria knows what works. It has even managed to prove it in one state. What it has not managed to do is apply the same discipline everywhere else. So the country keeps counting the dead on its rivers, and calling it misfortune.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com