Louis Ibah

With over 120 safety recommendations issued in the last 10 years by the Accident and Investigation Bureau (AIB), Nigerian sky should have been a lot safer for the flying public entertaining no fears both on the airworthiness of the aircraft they board and on the competence of the crew.

Daily Sun learnt that in the quest to boost air safety following a spate of air crashes that rocked the country between 2000 and 2006, the Nigerian government invested over $10million in state-of-the-art equipment, hiring the best accident and safety investigators it could lay hands on locally and internationally, as well as training and retraining existing staff of the AIB.

Today, to the credit of the Nigerian government, the AIB boasts of the best accident investigation laboratory in Africa and the fifth best in the world. In fact, the Nigerian AIB is so equipped that it is now conducting air accident investigations for neighbouring West African countries of Ghana and Sao Tome and Principe.

According to the Commissioner/CEO of the AIB, Mr. Akin Olateru, in the last 10 years, the agency has released over 120 safety reports and recommendations. The recommendations are products of the investigations it carried out in some of the air accidents and severe incidences involving aircraft in Nigeria.

Industry complaints

Globally, safety recommendations by an accident investigator like the AIB are meant to mitigate future occurrences of accidents and major incidences. In Nigeria, there is however fears within the industry that the recommendations are treated just like any other price of paper that is read and thrown into the dust bin. Although, no major air crash has been recorded in the industry in recent years, there have been several incidences considered as ‘near-crashes’ by industry observers.  Some of those incidences, Daily Sun learnt are pointers to the fact that the industry has not learnt much from the mistakes of the past.

In recent months, for instance, there have been reports of burglary of the cargo compartment of moving aircraft at the runway of the Lagos airport that had created the greatest panic among air passengers. According to analyst, John Ojikutu, the rise in incidences of aircraft burgling in Nigeria “was a dress rehearsal for copy-cat terrorists.”  Nigeria could be days away from recording a case of an aircraft hijack or blow up by terrorists as anyone who can access a moving aircraft to burgle it, can as well sabotage it. And there have also been other incidences of poor drainage of runways forcing an aircraft to skid off while landing, an aircraft door falling off after landing, smokes coming out of the cabin of an aircraft, as well as cows infiltrating a runway and disrupting an aircraft from landing. It was learnt that some of these incidences had occurred in the recent past prompting the AIB investigations with safety recommendations made to the NCAA, FAAN, ground handling companies, and airlines on how to stem their re-occurrences.

Have these safety recommendations been effectively implemented or not?  That is one question that industry stakeholders have been asking and seeking answers from the AIB.

AIB stance

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According to the Commissioner/CEO of AIB, Mr. Akin Olateru, the job of the AIB ends with the recommendation it makes to the relevant agencies that were found to have been culpable in facilitating any accident or incident. He absolves the AIB of any blame in implementing safety erecommendations.

“All we do is to investigate accidents and serious incidences and then we issue safety recommendations to forestall future occurrences,” said Olateru.

“We don’t enforce the recommendations that we make. That is the job of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority that regulates the industry,” Olateru said.

FG calls for probe

Worried by the status of the implementation of safety recommendations by the AIB, the Federal Government has however called for a probe on the effectiveness of the safety recommendations made by the AIB from its inception. The government recently inaugurated a specially committee of experts to handle that task. In the thinking of the government, safety recommendations are as critical as the investigation itself as it is the lever used to effect safety changes and improvements in the aviation industry.

ICAO also describes Accident Investigation as “a process conducted for the purpose of accident prevention, which includes the gathering and analysis of information, the drawing of conclusions, including the determination of causes and, when appropriate, the making of safety recommendations.” The purpose of accident investigation, which is to improve aviation safety cannot be achieved if AIM recommendations are not found to be effective by the stakeholders. The recommendations guide the regulators, operators, the Aviation  Ministry and other stakeholders in the industry.

It is with this background that government decided to review the AIB  recommendations from inception totaling 120 and measure the level of their effectiveness. Members of this committee are drawn from the AIB, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Ministry of Transportation and from experts in the aviation industry.

To ensure a balance and objectivity, the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, has approved the appointment of experienced industry experts as consultants to the committee. They include Captain Kiddie Dare and Engr. Gbolahan Abatan.

The committee will engage the affected stakeholders on the effectiveness of the safety recommendations addressed to them and submit their report under 30 days to the AIB which will work on it for the benefits of the industry.