A BABY whale measuring about 12 metres beached around 3.30 a.m. Wednesday on the Nigerian side of the Seme border town along the Nigeria-Benin Republic international corridor.
While some of the crowd that thronged the scene went with nothing more exciting than a camera, others went armed with knives, axes and bags.
It was all a little too much for security officers stationed at the area. So, around noon yesterday, the carcass of the whale was doused in fuel and burnt.
According to eyewitnesses, residents near the beach, including security officials and locals, became aware of the trapped animal in the early hours of Wednesday. This attracted a crowd who trooped to the area to behold the mighty creature, which was flopped belly-up on the Beach and had a large part of its tail buried in the sand.
This continued until yesterday, although by then, most of the whale’s tail and a large chunk of its body had been cut and carried away – possibly by those who would eat it.
Initial efforts by the security officials, including Customs, Police, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and Quarantine officers to rescue the animal were unsuccessful as their collective effort could not shift it. Twice they tied almost five inches thick ropes around the animal to tug at it. Twice the rope snapped.
When the animal eventually died, all efforts to move it also proved futile. “We tried to bury it or push it back into the ocean but we could not do it,” said one of the security officers.
But the officers succeeded in fencing the area of the beach away from would-be butchers by yesterday morning, around the time when part of the animal had started decaying, oozing of oil onto the beach.
“We don’t want them to continue cutting the fish because they might start selling its meat,” a customs officer said. “It is too bad some people decided to eat the fish. We don’t want them to sell this to others so that we don’t have an epidemic here.”
In 2001, a blue whale that beached on the Bar Beach also attracted a large crowd of visitors, and many people also made away with large parts of its meat.