Coalition of Eastern NGOs

The members of the Coalition of Eastern NGOs comprising over 120 NGOs operating in the nine States of the Old Eastern Region of Nigeria decries the spate of air crashes in Nigeria and calls on President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to do something concrete to sanitise the aviation sector. It is sad that it took over two hundred souls (including the best and brightest children of Loyola Jesuit College) to perish, for the problems in the Nigerian Aviation Industry to receive the attention of the Federal Government.

It is indeed a shame for all of us as a nation, the giant of Africa, to experience three plane crashes within an interval of seven weeks. This is more painful when one realizes that these incidents were clearly predictable by the rot in the aviation industry. From the facts emerging in the aftermath of these crashes, it is clear that almost everything is wrong with the sector. Airport facilities are either non-existent or obsolete. The airports have no perimeter fencing and that is why a herd of cows strayed into the tarmac and runway and collided with an Air France flight arriving from Paris not long ago. Recently, foreign airlines boycotted the Murtala Mohammed International Airport for reasons that have to do with lack of landing facilities, poorly maintained runways, ineffective radar coverage etc. The personnel have lost touch with modern techniques and our airports have been aptly described as death traps. It is only after the boycott that the federal authorities embarked on a hasty repair of the pot-hole infested runways. Sadly, the authorities have continued to starve the sector of funds – a paltry 5 billion Naira is provided for the sector in the 2006 budget.

It is noteworthy that as the whole world was celebrating the International Human Rights Day on December 10, the human rights of Nigerian travelers, including their right to life, were so callously violated. We have not heard the last of these crashes as the report of investigations are still being expected. However, we have heard that if there had been water at the airport on that day, some of the passengers could have been saved. We also have heard that there was a total absence of a professionally coordinated emergency rescue operation at the airport immediately after the accident, resulting in massive loss of lives. By the time help came, many of the passengers who did not die from burns, died from suffocation. We have also heard that there was a thunderstorm which caused the aircraft to explode. This calls to question the state of our radar system at the airport. What is the role of our meteorological departments?

Whatever may have been the immediate causes of these crashes, the fact remains that corruption pervades the aviation industry. The President acknowledged as much during the Stakeholders’ Forum which he hurriedly called to address the “problems” of the aviation sector. The government knew all along that there were problems in the sector needing attention but nothing was done until lives were lost. We learnt from revelations at that Forum that airlines cut corners when it comes to maintaining the aircrafts. The Presidential forum we saw last Tuesday ought to have been convened long ago.

Anything that can claim the lives of more than 200 people including children is equivalent to a declaration of war and must be fought with all the resources available to the state. In all, the plane crashes exposed the ineptitude and incompetence of the federal government to promptly respond to disasters and emergencies. We however commend the Rivers State Governor and his team for mobilizing human and material resources to assist in the recovery and identification of corpses by grieving parents.

To protest against this state of affairs and empathise with parents who lost their children and family members in the Sosoliso air crash of December 10th 2005, the Bellview crash of October 22nd 2005 and the Kaduna air crash, CENGOS organised a successful and peaceful protest march from D-Line to the Rivers State Secretariat and House of Assembly in Portharcourt, on Tuesday the 20th of December 2005.

The Coalition of Eastern NGOs commiserates with all who have lost relations in the crashes and calls on the Almighty God to comfort all the parents, husbands, wives etc. who lost family members in the air crashes and give them the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.

We hereby call on the Federal Government to rise beyond rhetoric and fire brigade approach and act decisively to save us from this scourge by:

allocating adequate resources to this sector and taking drastic action to rid the sector of economic saboteurs;
establishing a system that ensures that airlines comply with the international requirements for proper maintenance of the aircrafts, training of their staff, especially pilots and cabin crew on current industry practice, provision of dependable rescue facilities like functional fire fighting engine, search and rescue helicopters etc.
domesticating all treaties relevant to operations in the aviation sector and complying with international standards on activities in that sector.