Police officials in the Gabonese Republic have confirmed that a boat carrying illegal migrants from Nigeria has sunk off the coast of the country.

Ten illegal migrants are believed to be dead while twenty of them are unaccounted for in the disaster that was believed to have occurred on Tuesday evening.

Police say the illegal migrants are from West African nations of Benin, Nigeria and Burkina Faso according to what they gathered from scores who survived the accident.

The boat had left Nigeria and was within 15 minutes of arriving in the Gabonese capital Libreville when it went down in the water in the night.

The boat is said to have sunk on Tuesday night but because the boat was on an illegal journey, it came to nobody’s attention until Friday when the nautical brigade of Gabon national police spotted the incident.

Gabonese rescue officials say they have been able to rescue 23 survivors and the search will still continue to Saturday.

The Police said survivors have claimed to have each paid the boat’s crew up to 500,000 CFA francs ($1,000) to take them to Gabon, where they hoped to find work to better their lives.

An anonymous source from the nautical brigade of Gabon national police who asked not to be name said they have found a total of 10 dead bodies from the water and are still searching.

“The illegal immigrants drowned, last night we had six bodies and since this morning we have found four more, which makes a total of 10 recovered bodies,” he told reporters in Libreville.

In May this year, a boat carrying 166 illegal migrants from Nigeria to Gabon sunk off the coast of Nigeria in similar manner. About 40 people survived that accident.

Most poor West Africans who risk their lives each year to seek a better life head for Europe, usually via Spain’s Canary Islands but Gabon’s oil-funded relative prosperity has also made it a favorite destination.

With investment from former colonial ruler France, Gabon was one of the first sub-Saharan African countries to exploit its crude oil reserves, which have made its 1.5 million people among the continents richest on a per capita basis.

In July 2008, the bodies of 37 suspected illegal migrants were found dead on the seafront of Gabon’s capital Libreville, after a boat capsized taking the same West African nationals to Gabon route.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News

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