Louis Ibah
If everything goes as planned, rail, marine, and road accidents, wherever they happen in Nigeria, will no longer be swept under the carpet with no statutory agency investigating to identify the root causes of the incident to the affected parties. Thereafter solutions would be proffered on how to mitigate similar occurrences in the future.
Yes, the Federal Government is tinkering with the idea of transforming the Nigerian Accidents Investigation Agency(AIB) into a multi-modal agency, as it is with the United States of America National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). What this implies is that, the AIB will no longer be restricted to investigating aviation sector accidents and incidences, which is what it has been doing since it was established in 2007.
In a bill submitted to the National Assembly, President Muhammad Buhari, is seeking a new legislation that empowers, funds, and equips the AIB to probe the causes of Nigeria’s road, marine, rail transport accidents. It is a job that the AIB has been doing in the aviation sector and the implementation of the safety recommendations by the airlines, pilots, airports, NCAA, fire fighters,meteorological agency, and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has assisted greatly in curbing the incidences of air mishaps which had characterised the Nigerian aviation industry in the past years.
“We will soon be given a new mandate to investigate marine, rail, and road accident, and I believe that we have the capability to do it; we have the equipment and human capital,” said Akin Olateru, the AIB Commissioner/CEO.
“When you look at accident investigate, the technique is the same. How do you prevent future occurrence of a similar accident is the major focus of an accident investigator, and that is exactly what we want to in the other sectors of transport,” Olateru added.
Bill before National Assembly
According to the AIB boss, the AIB multi-modal bill is already with the National Assembly, and hopefully should be returned to the President before the end of the third quarter of 2019 for him to sign it into law.
Olateru said, some staff of the agency are already at various institutions in the US training on how to investigate road, rail and marine sector accidents.
“We will also take up other staff in agencies in the rail, road, and marine sectors and also train them. It is not going to be a one day thing; the task of transforming into a multi-modal agency is not going to happen overnight, but we will work to make sure it happens. Rome was not built in a day,” he said. Within the AIB, there is the excitement among staff that the new status would come with training opportunities, and carrier growth.
There is also the excitement of transferring safety standards from the aviation sector to the operation of road, rail, and marine businesses and making the operators and regulators cautious and responsible in their duties.
“In Nigeria, there is a car crash and people die and that is the end of it. No body investigates to know what went wrong,” said Olateru.
“It could have been as a result of a pothole that led to a car crash. No one holds FERMA to account. No want investigates and makes a recommendation that ensures that the pothole is fixed. That is what we will be doing, and things will have to change” Olateru added.
Industry fears
The plan to have the AIB veer off into investigating other transport modes appear not to be accepted by industry players in the aviation sector.The AIB may become another Nigerian Police force, or road safety corps that have been rocked by allegations of open receipt of bribes by officials.
A senior official of an airline told Daily Sun that the idea could overstretch the agency, weaken its oversight function on the aviation sector, or even expose staff to corrupt practices as culprits in the road, rail, marine sectors might want to get investors from AIB compromise their findings.
“The AIB has been doing a fantastic work in the aviation sector; airlines and airports are particularly benefitting from the safety recommendations by AIB to improve in their operations and service delivery,” said a senior airline staff who wouldn’t want it be named.
“in fact, the fear of the AIB coming after you is making a lot of airlines to improve on their safety procedures so that nothing goes wrong to attract the AIB. But there is the fear that these influence in the aviation sector may be weakened if the AIB is also saddled with the responsibility of at other sectors outside aviation,” he added.
All over the world, accident investigation agencies do not charge for their services, and stakeholders in the aviation sector are wondering if the AIB will enjoy the funding support of the government to undertake such a huge challenge of investigating road, marine, rail transport accidents in all states of the country.
“It is a very massive task that the AIB wants to take upon itself and how sure are they that they will get the requisite funds to go outside aviation and investigate accidents in road, rail and water transportation,” said the airline official that spoke with Daily Sun.
“Again, the fear arises; will the funds available for aviation accident investigation and prevention not be expended on the other sectors?”
Challenges
Transforming the AIB to undertake such a task of mitigating the needless deaths on Nigerian roads for instance, comes with a huge challenge in cost and personnel. There is also the challenge of ensuring the strict implementation of the AIB’s safety recommendations by the respective regulatory agencies in the road, marine, and rail transport industries. Is Nigeria ready to bear the costs that would eventually come with the new responsibilities.
Without a doubt, the challenge of funding a multi-modal agency is enormous. At present, the AIB is having great challenges sourcing funds to investigate air -related accidents and incidences. The bulk of the funds it utilises at present, comes from the five percent Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) collected by the NCAA, and which is shared among other agencies, like the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, Nigerian Meteorological Agency, and Nigerian College of Aviation Agency.
However in the last two years, the AIB has benefited immensely from funding provided by the US government’s ‘safe sky programme for Africa’. It is through this fund that the AIB has been able to train and retrain its staff that today it boasts of to the best manpower capacity in West and Central Africa.