Operators blame incessant Boat mishaps on bad weather

Tayo Oladipupo |

Boat operators under the aegis of the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transport of Nigeria (ATBOWATN) have adduced the recent increase in boat mishaps to waves and poor vision due to bad weather during the rainy season.

Mr. Ganiyu Balogun, National President of ATBOWATN said that there were winds that blew sometimes and made navigation unsafe.

The boat operators’ chieftain who also blamed the incessant accidents on human error stated this in a chat with journalists in Lagos recently.

Balogun however advised that people should be of safety conscious and make sure they wear life jackets properly and obey the Captain’s instructions which he said was like an order since the captain knows better.

His words, “But the cause of accident, that is why it’s called accident, depends on the weather, that’s why I tell them because we have not reached the stage of using this covered boats because response to the accident scene may be too slow and nobody can survive under the water especially when you don’t know how to swim or what to do even for few minutes.

“The best thing is, when the weather is rough, boats should not move. It doesn’t matter, if the passengers insist, tell them sorry, we cannot go, the water is very rough and if they want to make trouble about it, you give them back their money. That is what I do where I operate”.

He noted that cases of flagrant abuse of safety rules by Captains and boat users alike would soon be a thing of the past as Beach Masters would soon be employed, trained and deployed on Lagos waters first and subsequently to other parts of the country by the government.

“NIWA has indicated intention to post Beach Masters to all the jetties which means the Beach Master has the final say not the Captain this time.

“If the Beach Master says this boat cannot move because it has not met the safety standards or that the weather is bad, the boat cannot move.

“So, if you are so money conscious and you don’t care about the lives of the people, the Beach Master has a direct line to NIWA or LASWA or Marine Police, in fact it will not move because we are now preaching to our members to obey the rules and regulations.

“We used to tell them that if somebody dies today, the family of the deceased will not be happy and they may start canvassing that water transport is dangerous and people may be dissuaded from taking water transport. The best thing is to keep the people alive so that they can come again”, he said.

He added that the association would soon deploy an emergency rescue boat on the water to complement the activities of the soon to be deployed Beach Masters so that where the Beach Master tells a boat Captain not to leave and he leaves, they are going to call that emergency rescue boat to trail that boat to its destination and carry out appropriate disciplinary action on the recalcitrant Captain.

“However, we don’t encourage them to stop the boat in the middle of the water because it is dangerous, you probably follow the boat gradually so that as soon as it gets to the other end and everybody gets down from the boat, the Captain will be taken to the Marine Police for onward prosecution for failing to obey the rules and regulations, there will be nothing like he’s my friend, let him go, no!”, he added.