Revelations from the preliminary investigation into the boat mishap that occurred in Kupa, Kogi State, at the weekend, indicate that the accident was caused by the boat driver’s attempt to evade the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) Water Marshals, sources at NIWA and witness account have said.

The Marshals, it was gathered were on the waterways, enroute Katcha market in Niger State.

Although, as at press time the tonnage of goods and passengers on board were yet- to -be ascertained, Daily Sun however, gathered that NIWA has so far rescued 69 passengers, out which 24 have been hospitalised.

Speaking exclusively with Daily Sun, yesterday morning, sources at NIWA office in Lokoja expressed concern over the hostile nature of the community, a situation, that is making it difficult to elist raw facts with regards to the incident. A video of the visit by the NiWA team to the scene of the incident as reviewed by Daily Sun reporter also confirmed the concern raised by the agency.

However, one of the witnesses who volunteered information told Daily Sun that, “the wooden boat left Ebbe community, Kupa South District, Lokoja Local Government Area of Kogi state around 1:00am.

“And you know that the visibility will be very poor around that time. He may have done that to evade arrest by NIWA water Marshalls, who were on the waterways enroute Katcha market in Niger State.

“I cannot say precisely the number of passengers on board, including what and what the boat was carrying. All I know is that the boat was carrying passengers as it was moving until the accident happened some few minutes to 4 am,” the eyewitness, who from his narrative showed he may have been one of the passengers.

Multiple sources at NIWA corroborated the witness’ account, with one of the sources saying,”sadly, the boat mishap was detected through our (NIWA) alert system, and once we received the information, we wasted no time in activating our search and rescue teams from the Lokoja and Niger Area offices for quick rescue operations and we were able to rescue 69 passengers. But we cannot say how many were on board, therefore, the 200 deaths figure was unfounded.

“So far, we can only confirm six deaths at the scene of the accident and only 24 out of the 69 are hospitalised. The rest have reunited with their families.

“See, the truth is that the villagers are unwilling to volunteer information regarding the identity of the boat driver or the boat owner for fear of arrest and prosecution. But I know our MD will not relent until he gets all details because he would need to report formally to the ministry, detailing our findings at this preliminary stage,” one of the sources at NIWA added.

Another source at NIWA further said the authority while making efforts at recovering the submerged boat so as to enable further investigation, with a view to determining whether or not the boat was registered and its required carrying capacity, NIWA had equally reached out to the Government of Kogi State for stronger collaboration to further sensitise the riverine communities on the dangers of night traveling and over-loading on the inland waterways.