Recently, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) suspended the operations of a domestic airline, Max Air, for three months over a near mishap at the Aminu Kano International Airport. This is not the first time; In July 2024, another Max Air plane had a tyre burst during take-off from Yola Airport.
Similar incidents have been recorded by other domestic carriers lately, raising concerns over Air safety in Nigeria.
The aviation authorities (NACA) claimed that the three-month suspension slammed on Max Air was to allow for a thorough investigation into the immediate and remote causes of the incident while also giving the airline time to evaluate its operations internally and hopefully restore public confidence in its operations.
Though the country has not recorded plane crashes recently, there have been incidents of near misses, which could have been disastrous.
Between 2023 and 2024, there were about five air incidents involving aircraft overshooting runways and tyre bursting during landing.
In November 2023, an Aero Contractors aircraft crashed landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. A private HS25B aircraft also crashed landed in Ibadan, Oyo State. Before the Max Air incident, a ValueJet plane with 67 people on board overshot the runway at Port Harcourt International Airport.
While air travel is considered to be the safest means of transportation in the world, recent near-crash incidents have raised safety concerns among air travellers in Nigeria, forcing them to use alternative means of transportation.
According to a 2024 report, Nigeria’s aviation industry’s score dropped from 96.3 percent in 2015 to 71.04 percent in 2024 in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Universal Security Audit Programme (USAP) Continuous Monitoring Assessment (CMA).
Aviation industry experts attribute Nigeria’s low performance in the security audit to a lack of sufficient qualified personnel, training, technical guidance and tools, quality control obligations and safety concerns.
As a newspaper, we are concerned that if urgent steps are not taken to address the causes of near mishaps, we may find ourselves in a catastrophic situation that could have been avoided in the event of a plane crash.
Nigeria has a history of plane crashes some of which have resulted in numerous loss of lives.
Over 43 years, that is, between 1969 and 2012, a total of 1,764 lives were lost in plane crashes in Nigeria. One of the deadliest of these mishaps was the crash of Dana Air Flight 0992 in 2012, which killed a total of 159 people (153 on board and 6 on the ground).
Another deadly crash was the 1973 Royal Jordanian Airlines Flight 707 crash in Kano, which killed all 176 people on board. In total, 2,038 persons have died from air crashes in Nigeria between 1969 and 2022.
Nigeria’s current aviation protocols face challenges despite efforts to enhance them.
To avert near-air mishaps, the government and aviation authorities must urgently implement measures that will once again restore Nigerians’ confidence in air transportation.
Sufficient personnel qualities and training are needed. Regular periodic audits, inspections, checks, and oversight by regulatory authorities on operators must be prioritised. Poor oversight by the civil aviation authority could lead to tragic crashes if appropriate steps are not taken.
This newspaper also believes that airports in the country should have functional lighting to mitigate weather issues such as visibility, thunderstorms, and rainfall.
An uninterrupted supply of electricity should also be available at airports, specifically on runways and in Air Traffic Control offices, to improve visibility, aid flight crews in maintaining the right altitude, and prevent heavy landings.
Added to these is the compelling need for collaboration among industry stakeholders. This is essential if the desire to promote shared responsibility for safety management is to be achieved.
However, we believe that a worthwhile regulatory process should start with granting licences to operators. We are worried that considerations, largely political, influence the issuance of licences to operators even when it is obvious that they lack the required expertise and capital outlay needed to acquire healthy aircraft.
In most cases, the operators acquire decommissioned aircraft buried in aircraft cemeteries abroad, refurbish them, and recommission them to fly only in Nigeria. This explains why many local airlines are not certified to ply on international commercial routes.
To compound this challenge, the profit motive is given priority when the licences are eventually issued, while safety measures are downplayed where they exist.
Rather than waiting for accidents to happen, the regulatory authorities should establish stringent conditions for operating an airline, insist on a minimum capital base and pay strict attention to the quality of personnel and arrangements to expose them to regular training and retraining. We are persuaded to argue that an aircraft must not be assumed to be molue buses with no safety or other checks. Even those have been phased out in parts of the country because of safety concerns.
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