By Olalekan Adetayo
Published: Saturday, 21 Oct 2006

The ill-fated boat reportedly left Liverpool in Apapa for Igbo-Elejo Village at about 10pm on Thursday with about 18 passengers.

No sooner had the boat taken off than it developed a mechanical fault on the high sea.

Before the fault could be rectified, the boat reportedly capsized with all the passengers on board drowned.

Our correspondent learnt that the owners of the ill-fated boat later mobilised a small speed boat to the scene of the accident on a rescue mission.

As at the time of filing this report, only six of the 18 persons on board the boat had been rescued alive.

The mishap came barely five days after six persons died in another boat accident at Takwa Bay in Lagos.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Lagos State Command, Mr. Olubode Ojajuni, a deputy superintendent of police, confirmed the accident to our correspondent on Friday.

Ojajuni said a combined team of regular and marine policemen had already been drafted to the scene to comb the water for other victims.

The Area Commander in charge of Apapa, Mr. Femi Oyeleye, told our correspondent on the telephone that one of the survivors told him at the scene that the three rescue boats were deployed in the scene.

Oyeleye, an assistant commissioner of police, added that the survivor said that although six survivors were moved into one of the boats, he suspected that other survivors were conveyed in the other two.

This, the police boss said, indicated that the survivors might be more than six.

He said he had directed some of the victims’ relatives who approached him at the scene to the divisional police officer in charge of the area.

The police spokesman advised members of the public whose loved ones plied the route on Thursday and had not returned home to report such cases to the nearest police station.