ISSUES IN THE NAF PLANE CRASH

** The NAF fleet should be properly maintained to ensure safety **

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) last Tuesday released the list of victims of the Igbokoda air crash, comprising five crew members and 20 passengers. While we commiserate with the families of the deceased officers, the frequency of these crashes should command attention from the authorities beyond the routine investigations whose reports are never put in the public domain. The need for a proper interrogation of the accidents is to draw lessons that may be useful for the entire aviation sector, but more importantly for the armed forces.

Aviation stakeholders believe that the sequence of these crashes raises a ‘red flag’ to warrant precautionary measures so as to avert more disasters. The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Kelvin Aneke, has promised that the NAF would thoroughly investigate the cause of the crash, but Nigerians have heard such a promise several times in the past. It should never be lost on the authorities that an aircraft is not exactly like a car. Once airborne, the extent to which a pilot can manoeuvre to safety in a mishap is limited no matter their dexterity and skill.

Between 2015 and 2023, Nigeria suffered 13 military plane mishaps, killing no fewer than 37 military officers. In 2019 and 2021, the Air Force lost eight jets (with four incidents each) including the February 2021 Beechcraft King Air B350 which crashed on the way to Minna, Niger State after the pilots had reported engine failure. Seven military personnel died in the crash which occurred around the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. But perhaps the most devastating of the crashes occurred three months later around the Kaduna International Airport. Then Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 other senior military officers, perished in the crash. That tragedy and the latest in Ondo State echo the September 1992 crash of C-130 Hercules transport plane in Ejigbo, Lagos, which claimed the lives of all 158 middle-ranking officers on board.

There is a document in circulation which compares fund released to the NAF for aircraft maintenance with that of the Presidential Air Fleet. While releases to NAF are less than 20 per cent, that of the Presidential Air Fleet is above 90 per cent. The report has not been denied. In fact, a presidential adviser, Tope Fashua, has argued that the releases for the presidential fleet are so because they come under recurrent expenditure, while those of the NAF come under capital. We believe that budgetary approvals for the NAF fleet deserve equal importance as that of the presidential fleet whether in terms of capital or recurrent. Even when air crash rate is often a demonstration of how busy and engaged an Air Force is, we believe that some of the recent crashes could have been avoided, especially those that occurred outside combat operation areas.

While we don’t know the state of the aircraft that crashed, there have lately been reports about maintenance schedules being observed in breach. So, nobody can rule out asset age, material fatigue, and instrumentation failures. This combination is guaranteed to compromise the operational reliability of military air assets. Unfortunately, reports of military air crashes are classified. So there is no way the public can learn from these occurrences. But in most past incidents, leaked reports have hardly blamed human error, perhaps because our combat and transport air crew undergo some of the best trainings, both at home and abroad. That suggests that the problem may be with the fleet.

We understand that the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo added to the NAF fleet with the procurement of 15 Chinese F-7NI aircraft in 2005/2006. Not less than six of those aircraft have been lost to crashes, while just a few of them are currently airworthy. We therefore hope that the federal government will take another close look at matters of airworthiness, and the accountability of those entrusted with scheduled maintenance and spare parts procurement for aircraft. We have had enough of these crashes.