Senator AbdulFatai Buhari, PhD, Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation
Nigeria’s Senate has described as ultra vires, null and void, and utterly crappy, the Incident Investigation Report by the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau, NSIB, on the Air Peace Aircraft runway overrun incident at the Port Harcourt International Airport on 13th of July 2024.
The Senate committee on aviation, which conducted a thorough investigation, also held a public hearing in which concerned parties and other stakeholders were in attendance, uprooted every material particular in the findings reported by the NSIB.
Thus, the Senate absolved the nation’s largest carrier, Air Peace, of allegations of negligence and pilot drug use in connection with the 13th July 2024 runway overrun incident at the Port Harcourt airport.
The total condemnation of most parts of the report stemmed from a one-day investigative hearing conducted on Thursday, 6th November, at the Senate function room in the National Assembly complex.
Senator AbdulFatai Buhari, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aviation, said the upper chamber’s findings on the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau’s (NSIB) report revealed it was riddled with lots of contradictions and disparaging inconsistencies.
Barr Festus Keyamo, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development
Senator Buhari said what should have been a report based on hard facts turned out to be more of a fiction. He cited the initial NSIB report, which alleged drug abuse among several members of the Air Peace crew, but was later adjusted and zeroed in on the Pilot-in-Command and the First Officer as culpable of substance abuse, yet they manned the cockpit.
The committee chairman, obviously dissatisfied with the NSIB report, which contained half-truths, condemned the discrepancies and warned of the collateral damage that such a report, grossly lacking in integrity, could cause to the entire Nigerian air transport industry.
Buhari lamented, “You can see that, unfortunately, most of those allegations are not true. The report was disjointed and not coordinated,” the committee chair affirmed.
However, Senator Buhari offered a tutorial to NSIB management for free, thus, “You don’t accuse people wrongly, especially in aviation, where ICAO and other international aviation agencies are monitoring us closely”.
After the lamentation, the committee chairman found reasons to laud domestic carriers for maintaining robust safety standards, and for the regulatory body, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), for its relentless oversight of safety operations in the nation’s skies.
Capt Alex Badeh Jr., Director General, Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau, NSIB
Buhari enthused, “Air Peace, United Nigeria and all domestic Airlines are our own. We need to support them, not damage their reputation with unverified claims. The most important thing is that no lives were lost, and the aircraft was not damaged. It was towed and later flown back safely to Lagos.”
In his speech, Dr Allen Onyema, Chairman, Air Peace Airlines, described as slovenly, the manner by which NSIB conducted her statutory duties, which he described as most unfair and damaging to Air Peace’s image, whose reputation was either wittingly or unwittingly dragged to the mud but for God.
Onyema said his management would stop at nothing to ensure the safety of its entire operations. He added that random checks for drugs among the crews were conducted frequently.
In reference to the Port Harcourt incident and the shoddy manner that NSIB handled it, Onyema revealed that the aircraft involved suffered no mechanical fault or damage, and the runway excursion was purely the result of human error.
Onyema poignantly narrated thus, “The aircraft in question had no single damage. It flew back to Lagos the same day. The pilot has flown for nearly 40 years, one of the most experienced in our fleet. He simply had a bad day. Unfortunately, the early report created confusion that made it appear as if the aircraft was faulty or the pilots were intoxicated”.
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