Ondo crash: Mr President, Nigerians need answers

Behind the Rock by Stephen Angbulu

Last Tuesday, as I passed the ceremonial roundabout of the Aso Rock Villa, I noticed every flag flying at half-mast to mourn the personnel killed on Monday when an Air Force ATR-42 on a routine flight from Benin to Lagos crashed into a swamp at Igbokoda, Ondo State.

For most of that day, the Villa was eerily silent. Though staff went about their duties, you could breathe the palpable soberness. Hours earlier, President Bola Tinubu had declared three days of national mourning, and the Air Force had released the names of the dead.

I could only imagine the pain of their loved ones, until I learnt that some of those loved ones were also on the plane. The aircraft was carrying airmen, soldiers and some members of their families. Reports say some residents of Igbokoda recalled hearing what they thought was thunder.

Understandably, it was drizzling. It took someone fishing in the swamp to raise the alarm that an aircraft had gone down. Footage from locals who arrived at the swampy crash site showed snapped trees and scanty pieces of the airframe that did not survive the impact.

The images took me back to a Saturday afternoon on May 4, 2002. My younger sister and I were seated on the upper balcony of our home in Gwammaja, Kano. We had grown so used to the sound of aircraft taking off from and landing at the nearby Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport that we almost ignored the tragedy unfolding above us.

“Why are the almajiri boys staring into the sky for too long?” I wondered, until I followed their gaze to see a low-flying plane swaying from side to side before it plunged into the distance in our crowded neighbourhood and burst into a colossal ball of fire. Apart from the action movies, my young brain struggled to process such a thunderous sound and fireball in real life.

We rushed inside to wake our mum, a nurse, from her nap. She kept muttering prayers for God to spare the lives of the passengers as she rummaged through her bag for her ID card and hurried to the crash site on a commercial motorcycle.

Before long, I watched as pickup trucks sped to the nearest Orthopedic hospital in Dala, mostly carrying charred bodies. My father, who worked with the NCAA at the time, returned home deeply worried. It was from him I knew that the ill-fated aircraft was operated by an airline called Executive Air Services.

In the news that evening, I will know it as EAS Airlines Flight 4226 that killed at least 103 people, many of them residents on the ground, including children attending Islamiyah lessons at a mosque. To this day, I cannot shake off the dread of those children or the passengers as they watched the rooftops grow bigger by the second until the moment of impact.

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That day birthed my lifelong fascination with air crash investigation documentaries. Having watched hundreds of hours of air crash documentaries over the years, two lessons have stayed with me.

First, crashes don’t just happen. They are the product of seemingly unrelated events, a turn of weather, an error in judgment or even poor timing, all lining up in a deadly sequence. Second, and more uncomfortable, air safety is built on blood.

Most of the rules that keep planes safe and aloft today came from months of investigation into a crash. When implemented, those recommendations often save lives, until fate deals another blow.

It is no different for Nigeria’s civil aviation. Following the dark years of 2005/2006, which saw multiple disasters such as Bellview, Sosoliso and ADC, and later Dana Air in 2012, its safety record has turned a corner. However, we cannot make the same claim for military aviation.

In three short years alone, the Air Force has recorded at least six mishaps, including an FT-7NI trainer whose pilots ejected; an Mi-171 helicopter which went down in Shiroro, killing 11; an Mi-35P attack helicopter which crashed in Port Harcourt; a Super Mushshak trainer in Zaria; an Alpha Jet near Kainji; and the helicopter incident in Benue just days after the Ondo crash.

Good thing we are seeing the right early steps from President Tinubu, who ordered a thorough investigation, and a board of inquiry has been convened. Nigerians deserve answers, especially the grieving families.

So, Mr President, as the nation mourns, the truest way to ensure these deaths are not in vain is to take a personal interest in this investigation and implement its recommendations. That the men and women of our armed forces have sworn to protect and serve this country with their lives does not make their lives less precious. It does not mean they should lose their lives to avoidable circumstances.