Seven students of the Lawra Senior High School (SHS) are reported to have drowned in the Black Volta River near Dikpe community in the Lawra Municipality in the early hours of Saturday, June 14, 2025.
Five out of the seven bodies have been retrieved from the river, confirmed dead and deposited at the Lawra Municipal Hospital mortuary for preservation and autopsy.
Mr Abdul Latif Osman, the Upper West Regional Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), confirmed this to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Lawra at the weekend.
He said the search was still underway to recover the remaining two bodies from the river.
He indicated that the incident happened between 0700 Hours and 0800 Hours on Saturday when about 15 cadet members of the school undertook their ritual jogging to the Black Volta River to cross to the Burkina Faso side of the river.
Mr Osman said reports indicated that it had been a ritual activity of the cadet members of the school to cross the Black Volta River and return but this time they used a different route for their exercise.
He said upon reaching the river site, they spotted a young man of Burkinabe descent with a canoe at the Burkina Faso side of the river, so they called him to transport them across the river.
According to Mr Latif, 10 students out of the 15 boarded the canoe with the operator making 11 people onboard though the canoe was designed to carry less than 10 people.
Along the journey the canoe capsized and all the 11 people onboard fell into the river.
Three students, two females and a male as well as the operator swam ashore while the seven others could not be found and the incident was reported to the Dikpe community elders.
The NADMO Director reported that when the community elders arrived at the scene, they had to perform some rituals before they could search for those missing in the water.
The search, therefore started from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. during which the five bodies were recovered.
Meanwhile, Mr Latif told the GNA that the canoe had also been retrieved but the operator had escaped.
The Upper West Regional and Lawra Municipal Directors of Education, members of the Lawra District Security Committee (DISEC) and management of the Lawra SHS were at the accident scene.
A similar incident occurred in 2008 where a student of the Lawra SHS drowned in the Black Volta River when members of the Geography Club of the school went on an excursion to the river. —GNA
