A scuba diver, Kelvin Soldier Ngwa, has been found dead 2 days after reported missing amid an unapproved diving activity at Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) facility in Warri, Delta State.
The Diving Personnel Development Foundation (DPDF) disclosed this in a press statement disseminated on Tuesday, signed by its Principal Investigator, Mr. Julius Ugwala.
According to the report, at about 11am on May 2nd, 2024, the scuba diver went missing during a salvage dive job for air lifting around a submerged barge at NPA Warri, with a depth of over 15 meters. The diver was later found dead on Saturday, May 4th at the job site.
“He had successfully air lifted during the first dive and was given a pull to come to surface so he could check his air gauge which was allegedly at 100bar. Thereafter, he took the second dive but the tender noticed the diver soon stopped responding to pulls and deployed a standby diver who followed the lifeline down. Sadly, the standby diver found scuba cylinder, with body harness and sign of little entanglement,” the investigator explained.
Ugwala, who is also Nigeria’s Chief Inspector of Diving, observed that the incident which took place at Matrix/ Ayiri tank farm, NPA Warri was SCUBA Diving – an operation that is restricted by Factories (Diving at Work) Regulations, 2018.
The diving expert lamented that no approval was granted to the company for the commencement of any diving operation within Nigeria territorial water in line with the Diving at Work Regulations.
Meanwhile, some possible causes of the incident were listed to include; substandard equipment, inexperience, faulty demand valve gauge, limited volume of air in the cylinder, inadequate size of team, unqualified dive supervisor, no hyperbaric chamber onsite, no Emergency Response plan/procedure, among others.
He, however, recommended, diving research to be embarked on for continuous improvement in the sector and encouraged that incidents/accidents are reported and investigated so the nation learns from them.
“Programmes targeted at aspiring and current leaders who want to understand diving business practices be encouraged,” he recommended.
The Diving Personnel Development Foundation (DPDF) is a non-profit organisation concerned about the total well-being of divers, that encourages equal work opportunities and promotes safe diving operations.
DPDF dreams for an industry without incidents/accidents and so drives studies and analyses of events and mishaps with the aim of drawing attention to gaps in the sector and making recommendation on how those gaps can be closed.
