NIGERIA-TRANSPORT: Buckling Up Doesn’t Guarantee Safety

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Remi Oyo

CALABAR, Nigeria, Apr 24 1997 (IPS) - Flight 071 to this ancient south- eastern port city this week had not one empty seat.

During the boarding from Lagos, the 92 passengers exchanged banter and greetings with friends and associates as they buckled up and took their seats for the one-hour flight.

But as soon as the humming of the engines began and the plane prepared to take off, a blanket of silence fell over the cabin. The only voice that could be heard was that of the stewardess reading out the safety procedures in case of an air emergency.

Air travel has become such a risky business in Nigeria that passengers now find it hard to “sit back, relax and enjoy the flight”.

“It is difficult to enjoy any flight these days,” a businessman who wishes to be referred to as Shehu told IPS on board the flight.

“For me, I do not have a choice but to travel because of the nature of my job…but for every one hour I fly, you can be sure that it is like 10 hours to me– 10 whole hours of stress…you can see a lot of the passengers holding their prayer beads,” he said.

Confidence has waned considerably among air travellers in the past year. In 1996, Nigeria recorded more air disasters (47 crashes) in one year than in the past 26 years.

The Federal Civil Aviation Authority has issued statistics which show a reduction in passenger traffic. The latest figures covered the second quarter of last year and showed that passenger traffic fell by 4.3 percent to 1.179 million.

The worst air disaster was last November when a Boeing 727 belonging to ADC airline, a publicly quoted company, crashed minutes before completing its one-hour journey from Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta to Lagos. All 143 passengers on board were killed.

Cemented in the memories of current air travellers are the nightmarish reports of the crash and the futile attempts to rescue the victims. This crash highlighted the absence of a 24-hour Search and Rescue Mission (SAR) in Nigeria as required by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Nigeria needs 50 million U.S. Dollars for an effective SAR team, but such funds, said Transport Minister Ibrahim Gumel, are unavailable.

Investigations into several air disasters, including the one last year in which Ibrahim Abacha, the first son of Nigerian leader General Sani Abacha, was killed, have pointed a finger at pilot error.

“The…accidents that we have witnessed in Nigeria so far have been largely attributed to the human factor…mechanical problems were almost non-existent,” Aviation Minister Ita Udo-Imeh told a recent seminar on aviation safety held in Calabar.

The minister alleged that there were cases where some pilots attempted to land and made several approaches in inclement weather. Pilots, Minister Udo-Imeh said, must develop good operating techniques so that the possibility of blunders is reduced and all critical actions are cross-checked.

“…If the standard operating procedure is adhered to such that there is always a pair of eyes watching what another pair of hands are actually doing, and that no actions are taken entirely by one individual, then the safety rate is going to improve enormously,” the minister said.

But airline pilots argue that they are not the only ones to blame. They allege that airline operators force some of their colleagues to fly defective aircraft.

Ibrahim Mamman, an engineer and Head of the Directorate of Safety Regulation and Monitoring, told the seminar that the operators even encourage the “crew and maintenance personnel to violate civil aviation regulations”.

“This is in utter disregard for the safety implications,” said Mamman, who further alleged that the operators issue “threats of dismissal against uncooperating staff”.

Following the November crash, the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers called on the government to urgently set up “a good maintenance base for aircraft so that we can be sure of the technical state of aircraft in our air space”. The recommendation is yet to be implemented.