At least 103 people, including children, were killed when a boat leaving a wedding overturned in northern Nigeria, according to officials on Tuesday.
According to police spokesman Okasanmi Ajayi, locals, and police were still looking for dozens of people who were on the crammed boat that sank early on Monday on the Niger River in the Pategi district of Kwara state, which is 160 kilometers from Ilorin, the state capital. He said that so far, 100 people had been saved.
According to Abdul Gana Lukpada, a local chief, the majority of those who perished were relatives from other villages who attended the wedding together and partied into the night. The local boat was used to leave the event as a downpour flooded the road after they arrived on motorcycles.
"Nearly 300 people were aboard the overloaded boat. The boat struck a large log in the water as they approached and broke in half, according to Lukpada.
Usman Ibrahim, a local, confirmed that the wedding took place in the village of Egboti in the nearby state of Niger. It took hours before many people learned what had happened because the collision occurred at 3 am, he claimed.
Local residents raced to the scene as the passengers drowned and were able to save approximately 50 of them at first, according to Lukpada, who described the early efforts as slow and "very difficult."
One of Nigeria's greatest rivers was still being searched for further dead as of Tuesday afternoon by authorities and people. The search and rescue effort will go on through the night until Wednesday, according to police spokesman Ajayi.
According to locals, it was the deadliest boat accident they had witnessed in a long time.
According to regional customs, all of the dead that had been found up to that point had been buried by Tuesday night, most of them close to the river, according to Lukpada.
In a statement, the office of Kwara Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq said he "continues to monitor the rescue efforts already mounted since Monday night in search of possible survivors" and expressed sympathy to the families of those murdered.
In many isolated villages in Nigeria where locally manufactured boats are frequently utilized for transportation, boat accidents are a prevalent occurrence. Overloading and the use of badly maintained boats are the main causes of accidents.
