The 2024 boat accident involving Nollywood star Junior Pope and four other people on the Anam River in Anambra State was caused by human mistake rather than a mechanical issue, according to the National Inland Waterways Authority, or NIWA.
Bola Oyebamiji, NIWA’s managing director, revealed the information Thursday during a multimodal transportation stakeholders event in Abuja.
He claims that several of the passengers refused the life jackets that were supplied to them prior to the fatality.
“It was not mechanical failure, not impediments in the water or weather challenges, but purely a flagrant disregard for rules and regulations guiding movement on the inland waterways,” Oyebamiji said.
Oyebamiji cited the incident to claim that passenger behavior like this compromises the agency’s attempts to maintain the highest level of safety on waterways.
Additionally, he urged all water users to assist NIWA in increasing national awareness of safety.
Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Allen Onyema, the CEO of Air Peace Limited, the Director-General of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, and the Director-General of the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau were also present at the occasion.
In April 2024, Junior Pope was one of the people that drowned on the way back from filming “Another Side of Life,” a film that Adanma was producing.
In Asaba, Delta State, near Cable Point on the River Niger, the boat overturned.