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It is nearly a month now since the Beechraft 1900D aircraft belonging to Wings Aviation Services on a flight from Lagos to Bebi Airstrip near the famous Obudu Cattle Ranch Resort in Cross River State disappeared from the Nigerian skies and has since not been found.
Although the management of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has denied the story, report indicates that the agency has practically given up on the efforts to search for and recover the aircraft that went missing on March the 15th. Indications are that NEMA has thrown up its hands in despair because it does not possess the required sophisticated equipment needed to operate in the clearly difficult and risky mountainous terrain the aircraft is suspected to have come to harm. With the news some days ago that the Cross River State government has also thrown in the towel in the hunt for that missing aircraft and instead directed the Federal Government to seek the assistance of neighbouring Cameroun to help with the search in its territory, an effective end may have been signalled for the search. This is unacceptable. Hopes for the lives of the crew members may have dimmed but it is unacceptable that any indication whatsoever should be given that the story of the aircraft has become history. For the sake of the image of this country, efforts must still be made to locate the plane or its wreckage. For each day that that aircraft and its three-member crew are not found, our embarrassment as a nation deepens. It is true that if a small aircraft such as the Beechraft 1900D plane crashes against a rock or falls into the several ravines around the Obudu highlands, it would be extremely difficult to locate it or what remains of it. Some experts have also pointed out that it is not unusual for a light aircraft like the one in question to disappear from the skies, so to say, and is never found as was the case with a similar airship which, several years ago, disappeared in the Nevada desert in the United States and has never been found till date. These, certainly, are not any consolation to the families of the crew members of Beechraft 1900D. We must do everything to assuage the psychological trauma of the families of the crew members in particular and of air travellers in Nigeria in general. It is incredible to think that one could undertake an air trip, a calamity happens and one’s remains is never again found. No air traveller will feel safe knowing that he can just disappear from the skies like that without any trace. Given the rather unpalatable history of air mishaps in recent times, it is in the interest of all concerned that something is done to reassure both domestic and foreign air travellers that our skies are safe. Each passing day that that aircraft is not found is a severe indictment on the way we run things in the country. So much has been said about the lack of navigational equipment to make flying a safe and pleasurable means of transportation in our country but very little has been done in real terms. When between 2005 and 2006, the nation witnessed series of air mishaps that caused great concern, the former Obasanjo administration in response to the panic created by the misfortune, appropriated the sum of 19 billion naira to rescue the troubled aviation sector. How is it that inspite of that capital commitment, so much is still lacking in the aviation sector? The fact that an aircraft can just disappear without trace today is an indication that national attention still needs to be focused on our air transportation to see to it that basic facilities are put in place and the necessary regulatory measures are strictly enforced, to ensure that air travellers not only get to their destination but do so in one piece. We must put an end to the several embarrassments and misfortunes we have suffered because of a lack of commitment to develop the aviation sector.
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