It Does Not Have To Be This Way

As my little two year old takes his bath, he is suddenly distracted. The sounds of a boat on the river behind my house has distracted him. “I want to see boat,” He screams in his babyish voice and lunges for the window in my room.
The same boats my son leaps to see, carries other children to school. Children who live across the river.
Everyday I watch this children come and go safely without seeing any safety gadgets. I wonder if they can swim. What happens if the boat capsizes or sinks? I haven’t noticed any lifeguards around.
Different boats zoom by my window, the speed boats, normal boats and canoes. But the ones used by the children are canoes- the rickety looking ones. My guess is that the rickety looking canoes are the ones meant for transportation. The fares charged however are an indication that the business is not too profitable; a fifty naira ride takes you across the river. It is cheap for the users and fast too. Instead of a close to two hundred naira trip from Okota to Festac Town they pay fifty naira. Business is normally good in the mornings and afternoons when these children go and come from school. The children are their major customers.
Adults use the canoes too. But I am more concerned about the children, the children who go to school, go to school for brighter future, brighter future that should not cost them their lives.
The journey is a short one across the river, a ten to fifteen minute journey. Anything can happen on a wrong day in that short time.
The river behind my house could just have been like the Grand Canal in Venice, where tourists come to ride in its beautiful gondolas, where lovers come to fall in love again, somewhere used to boost revenue accrued to the government as a tourist attraction not a death trap waiting patiently for its prey.
The National Inland Waterways authority should supervise its waterways more often. I want to believe they have a safety department.
While I pray that this river never claims any of these children, human errors as regards lack of regulation of rivers and waterways should be addressed. Please if you are reading this and you know someone in authority who can make a difference, please reach out to them. Let us be our brother’s keeper in deed.

As we find a solution, may my son continue to lunge for the window happily to see his precious boats and may the many lives of the precious children who go to school on these boats continually be safe. Amen.