COAS Death: Stakeholders Express Grave Concern Over State Of Nigeria’s Military Aircrafts

Posted by African Examiner African News, Featured, Latest Headlines, News, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Sunday, May 23rd, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Stakeholders in the aviation sector have expressed grave concern over a recent spate of air mishaps involving a military aircraft.

Speaking in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday, the aviation players expressed the belief that the Air Force should properly investigate the Beechcraft King Airplanes on its fleet in order to prevent further crashes.

Former Chief Executive Officer of Aero Contractors, Capt. Ado Sanusi said “I think we need to look at the operations of the Nigerian Air Force to see whether there are specific problems that need to be looked into. We have to look at the machines, maintenance and technical capability.’’

On its part, Dr Gbenga Olowu, President, Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI) said that security issues were delicate to handle but frequent that Air force crash in one single year could be due to poor oversight functions by its supervising authority.

The ARSTI president noted that paucity of funds for routine maintenance, training and retraining of personnel or outright sabotage could also be responsible.

Most of the aviation experts who spoke, however, declined to comment specifically on the crashed Airforce plane that killed the chief of army staff, Lt. General Ibrahim Attahiru and others, saying that the crash is under investigation.