More than three decades after a training accident claimed 11 young lives, Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu returned to the site to make sure they weren’t forgotten, unveiling a cenotaph and laying wreaths at the Nigerian Navy Basic Training School in Onne, Rivers State, for the Nigerian Defence Academy naval cadets of the 41 Regular Course who died there on July 23, 1990.
The tragedy unfolded during what should have been routine training: 23 first year cadets were practising boat handling when their vessel struck a stationary jetty and capsized, killing 11 of them. Shaibu, addressing the ceremony according to a statement from Acting Director of Army Public Relations Colonel Appolonia Anele, called it one of the saddest chapters in the history of Nigerian military training, and said he stood there with genuine reverence and a solemn sense of duty to honour cadets who had once been his own course mates. He described the cenotaph as a lasting tribute to young patriots whose service to Nigeria was cut tragically short, and framed the ceremony itself as part of a deeper military tradition, one where remembrance reinforces esprit de corps, institutional continuity and the resolve of future officers to serve with the same honour and devotion to duty that those 11 cadets never got the chance to fully live out.
