About 29 persons, including two who survived by clinging to a cooking gas cylinder, have been rescued after a wooden boat capsized offshore Calabar, Cross River State, with an estimated 128 people onboard, Cross River State Emergency Management Agency (CRSEMA) official said yesterday.

The wooden boat had set off on Friday from Benin Republic, overloaded with passengers who had hoped to find work in Gabon, Head of CRSEMA, Vincent Aquah, said, citing survivor accounts.

The vessel had stopped at the Oron port in Akwa Ibom State, to collect more passengers but two hours after returning to sea, the engine began taking on water.

The captain told passengers to pray, telling them, “we are in serious trouble”, according to Aquah’s account.

As the boat began to sink, passengers jumped into the water, with the captain and three others grabbing hold of the floating cylinder.

“But after some hours, the captain and another passenger, a woman, could no longer hold on, and fell into the water,” Aquah explained.

A 27-year old man from Togo, and a 14-year old girl from Benin, managed to continue clinging to the makeshift raft.

They said that as they drifted, they saw a flame coming from an offshore oil field operated by the Chinese firm, Addax Petroleum.

A foreign oil worker on the platform, who spotted them, dispatched a boat to rescue the two, said Aquah.

“We have 29 survivors so far from the boat accident,” he told newsmen in Calabar yesterday, adding that the total number of bodies recovered so far remained at nine.

There were previous indications that the boat had originated from Congo-Brazzaville, but Aquah insisted those accounts were inaccurate.

The vessel is believed to have capsized at Malabo, 40 nautical miles (60 kilometres) off the coast of Calabar, the Cross River State capital.

Aquah specified that two of the survivors had been brought to Calabar, while 27 others were in Oron, Akwa Ibom State.

The rescue operation began on Sunday, and “the search for the remaining passengers is still on,” Aquah said, adding that the wreckage of the ship had not yet been located.

Corroborating Aquah’s account, Coordinator, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Olayemi Abass, said “some 27 of the survivors were taken to Oron and two brought to Calabar. Those in Calabar are receiving treatment at Bakorm Medical Centre, Calabar.”

Abass indicated that the wooden passenger boat, which was conveying a total 128 passengers, including three Nigerians – a male and two females, and others from Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Niger, was on an illegal voyage to Gabon, when the iunforunate incident occurred.

It would be recalled that in July, 2012, a ferry sank in choppy waters as it crossed from mainland Tanzania to the island of Zanzibar, leaving at least, 104 people drowned.

Zanzibar authorities charged three people with manslaughter over the sinking of the ship, the MV Skagit, including its owner and captain.

In September, 2010, more than 200 people perished when the MV Spice Islander, which the authorities admitted was overloaded, sank while sailing between two of the main islands in the Zanzibar archipelago.

Rescue workers saved 619 passengers in that terrifying incident.

Meanwhile, at least, 50 persons drowned and some 35 were reported missing after a boat accident on a river in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo in July, 2011.