9 rescued, 76 missing as boat capsizes in Anambra (updated)

An engine boat carrying 85 passengers capsized at Umunankwo in the Anambra State’s Ogbaru local government area over the weekend, leaving an undetermined number of people thought dead.

According to reports, 76 of the passengers are still missing. The engine boat, which had departed from Onukwu Bridge and was traveling toward Nkwo Market in Ogbakuba, capsized.
Pascal Aniegbuna, the chairman of the Ogbaru’s transition committee, stated that “although some of the passengers were rescued, some others, sadly, lost their lives.”

Related read: Several passengers on the boat in Anambra are thought dead.

The engine boat that carried roughly 85 passengers from Onukwu bridge Ossomala to Nkwo Ogbakuba market capsized this morning, according to a SEMA representative. Only 9 passengers were saved; the other passengers have not been located.

Hon. Victor Afam Ogene, a former representative from the area, expressed shock and grief at the development, which he claimed took the lives of several individuals.

‘This tragic news of this horrific catastrophe is numbing and painful to me personally, and must be tremendously upsetting, especially to the direct families of the victims,’ he said. Ogbaru as a whole has lost something, and we are all grieving together.

“My sympathies are sent to the affected families as well as the people and villages of Ogbaru, who recently found themselves in the path of a major flood disaster that nearly drowned all of our communities and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes.”