7 Drowned Lawra SHS students buried
Disaster struck the Lawra Senior High School last Saturday, June 14, 2025, when seven members of the school cadet corps drowned in the River Dikpe.
All the seven bodies made up of two boys and five girls were retrieved from the river and sent to the Lawra Municipal Assembly morgue for preservation but as of 3 p.m. last Sunday, six of the bodies had been released to their families for burial.
Five of the bodies were retrieved last Saturday and the other two on Sunday.
The incident occurred last Saturday morning when the canoe on which the students were crossing to the other side capsized midstream.
Three of the students managed to swim to the bank of the river but the rest who were unable to swim, got swept away by the undercurrent.
The deceased were part of the school cadet corps who were on their early morning routine, jogging.
Confirmation
Confirming the incident to the Daily Graphic, the Upper West Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Razak Abdul Korah, said the GES would come out with a detailed report on it later.
He said as at 2 p.m. yesterday, the Regional GES had visited two of the deceased families in the Daffiama Bussie Issa District “and we are currently on our way to Nadowli to visit one other family.”
As at the time of filing this report all seven deceased students had been buried and Mr Korah said the GES was visiting affected families to commiserate with them and share in their grief.
The incident
Explaining how the incident happened, the Upper West Regional National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) Coordinator, Abdul Latif Osman, said the cadet corps was on their usual routine jogging last Saturday morning.
He said it was an annual ritual of the cadet corps to cross the river to the other side as part of their training.
However, he said that where they usually crossed used to be shallow and they could cross on foot to the other side.
On this eventful day, he said the team used a different route and tried to cross via a canoe.
He explained that when they got to the bank of the river, they saw a Burkinabè with a canoe who was crossing and they decided to join the canoe to cross.
Ten out of the 15 students joined the canoe, while the other five decided to wait for them.
Mr Osman said it was while crossing to the other side that the canoe capsized, leading to the drowning of the seven.
He said three of the students: two females and a male, managed to swim to the bank, while the other seven were swept away by the undercurrent.
He said the Burkinabe who was in charge of the canoe escaped and was nowhere to be found.
Rituals
The regional NADMO coordinator explained that the incident occurred around 8 a.m. last Saturday and when those who survived informed the community, there was a need to perform some rituals before the search team could enter the river.
He said the team began the search around 10 a.m. and within one hour, five bodies had been retrieved.
After a fruitless search for the other two, the search party had to abandon the exercise but continued on Sunday morning and retrieved the remaining bodies.
