The federal government has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia on training of aircraft accident investigators between the two countries.
The Accident Investigation Bureau of Nigeria, which has transmuted to National Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) signed for Nigeria, while the Accident Investigation Bureau of Saudi Arabia signed for the Arabian country in Abuja yesterday.
Speaking after signing the MoU, the commissioner of AIB-N, Akin Olateru said “there is one aviation in the world and the rule of the game is cooperation. There is no one country that is an island. We need to work together as a team to enhance safety.
“We are both established. We both have equipment. We both have human capital but there are a lot of lessons we can learn from each other.”
Speaking on the details of the MoU, Olateru said, “Saudi Arabia will help us in the area of human capital development, we can engage ideas and its all about improving safety for the flying public.
We are going to have constant exchange of ideas.
There will be some form of training exchange programme.
This agreement would have signed before COVID but we are glad, it is signed now.”
Also speaking, the director-general, AIB Saudi Arabia, Abdulelah Felimban said: “We came to meet our counterpart in Nigeria, the Accident Investigation Bureau of Nigeria to open the channels of communication, of cooperation, of sharing experiences, learning from each other and benefiting from the capabilities that each of us have.
“We do investigations to ensure and promote sir safety.
Our business is to collect data, evidences, analyse them and put forward recommendations to make our skies safer.
He further said the MoU is “an Executive Technical Cooperation Programme. The benefit for both of us is that there is a lot of learning that goes with investigations. So this cooperation mechanism allows us to exchange the knowledge and experiences gained amongst our contestants.”
