More than 60 people were drowned off south-west Cameroon on the weekend when a motor boat crowded with passengers and cargo capsized on its way to Nigeria, witnesses and survivors said on Monday.
Fon Achobang, a local newspaper reporter, told Reuters he and other colleagues saw 63 bodies being buried on Sunday after the accident, which occurred late on Saturday, about 20 km west of the coastal town of Limbe.
Achobang, who works for the Limbe-based newspaper Eden, said survivors told him that the boat had left the village of Tiko, near Limbe, and was ferrying passengers and cargo to Oron in neighbouring Nigeria.
”But as it moved along, they kept on taking on more passengers, so much so that by the time the boat capsized there were over 100 passengers on board,” Achobang said.
He said the survivors reported that most of those on board had been Nigerians who were living in Cameroon, some working as farmers and fishermen.
Shipwrecks and capsizes of unseaworthy vessels overloaded with passengers and cargo are common in West and Central Africa.
In March, at least 127 people disappeared and were feared drowned when a wooden boat travelling from Nigeria to Gabon sank in heavy seas off Cameroon’s Atlantic port of Kribi. — Reuters