How safe are Nigerian skies and aircraft?

Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC   The Citizen, Thursday, 07 June 2012 21:06 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
On March 15, 2012, the Deputy Inspector General of the Nigerian Police, Haruna John, perished together with three other police officers in a helicopter accident after hovering over the skies of Jos to monitor the ongoing religious fighting. Unbelievably, that accident left Nigerian police with only one helicopter.

The Jos incident was merely the opening for worse to come in a country where aviation accidents are becoming a norm. First, it was on Saturday in the neighbouring country of Ghana when a Nigerian cargo Boeing 727 plane originating in the Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, crash-landed at 7.10pm local time near the airport in the capital, Accra.

The plane, which was operated by Allied Air, hit a minibus on the ground after overshooting the runway. The tragedy killed ten people in the minibus but four crew members survived. Nobody really took it as a warning.

On Sunday before noon, less than 24 hours after the Accra incident, people were crying all over Lagos when a passenger jetliner, McDonnell 83, crashed in a densely-populated area killing 153 on board and at least another 40 on the ground. The Dana Airlines plane was flying from Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

Sunday’s crash was one of the worst in either Nigerian skies or related to Nigeria airlines. Based on various sources, the deadliest happened in 1991 when all 261 passengers on board a Nigerian Airways jetliner died after its landing gear caught fire shortly after take-off in Saudi Arabia en route to Nigeria.

Another worst time for Nigerians was towards the end of 2005 when over 220 people were killed in two crashes in Nigeria. It first started on October 22 when a Nigerian Bellview Airlines Boeing 737 airliner crashed shortly after take-off from Lagos killing all 111 passengers and six crew.

Then on December 10, a Nigerian Sosoliso Airlines jetliner, DC9, from Abuja crashed on landing in Port Harcourt, this time killing 106 people, half of them schoolchildren on their way home for Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Sadly, Nigerians, who are considered by pollsters as among the world’s happiest people, have witnessed over 1,300 of their loved ones perish in aviation accidents since 1991. Neither has the military been spared as on September 26, 1992, an American-made Air Force C-130 crashed minutes after taking off from Lagos airport killing almost 200 soldiers.

In fact, ten major accidents have taken place in Nigeria in the last two decades. One of them happened on November 7, 1996, when a Boeing 727 operated by Nigeria’s ADC crashed on its way from Port Harcourt to Lagos and none of the 142 passengers and nine crew members survived.

Another accident occurred on May 4, 2002, when a Nigeria EAS Airlines BAC 1-11 crashed in Kano killing 75 on the plane and at least 73 on the ground. Again, on October 29, 2006, an ADC airliner with 114 passengers on board burned after take-off from Abuja killing 96 of them.

This number of accidents in one country is an awful lot. To put it in other words, before an average Nigerian even gets married, they will hear about ten serious incidents of aviation accidents in their country.

One may argue that Nigeria is a sub-continent with over 160 million people living together in a country the size of Tanzania, but how about the United States, which has 310 million people and the world’s busiest skies and airports? Consider this, in almost the same period, that is, from 1997 to 2007, the US has reduced the accident rate from one fatal accident in 2 million in 1997 to unprecedented one fatal in 4.5 million departures.

But Nigeria is not the only country in Africa with such a huge number of deadly aviation accidents. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is another dangerous place to fly, and speaking of airlines, Kenya Airways is another airline to watch as in the last 12 years it has killed 284 people in two accidents.

Not long ago, on May 5, 2007, Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 with 114 on board crashed in Douala, Cameroon killing everyone on board including a Tanzanian female military officer who was coming home from a peacekeeping mission in West Africa.

The worst Kenya Airways accident occurred on January 30, 2000 when an Airbus A310 carrying 169 and ten crew members crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Cote d’Ivoire after take-off from Abidjan. Only ten people survived and again one Tanzanian, a senior official with the African Development Bank in Abidjan, lost his life.

This Nigerian incident, in which the plane flown by an American pilot aided by an Indian co-pilot and an Indonesian flight engineer, crashed on buildings when both engines failed, reminds us of the seriousness of aviation safety measures, which for some reasons are wanting in Africa. Why in Africa? Why?