Latest aircraft poaching: An imminent time bomb

2017 has come and gone like the past ones, but there are some landmarks recorded in the country’s aviation sector that will linger on for the greater part of the new year which left a sour taste in the mouth of stakeholders across the sector.

One of such events that took place towards the end of the year which further dented the image of the sector was the mysterious poaching of a Vistajet aircraft on the 18Right runway of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

Not up to two weeks, the sector was again treated to a similar case involving a private jet carrying two celebrities, Tiwa Savage and Wizkid  from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State into Lagos airport.

According to information gathered, trouble came when it was discovered that the celebrities’ luggage had been stolen from the cargo holds of the plane while taxiing on the Lagos airport runway.

The circumstances surrounding the unpalatable events did not only knock down the security apparatus in the sector but once again put to test the effectiveness of the aviation authorities particularly the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) on whose shoulder lies the responsibility of managing the airports to international standards and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the supposed ‘police’ of the sector.

Without any sentiment, call it anything; an act of robbery, theft or burglary, a crime actually took place right inside the Lagos airport.Unfortunately, while it was certain that an unlawful act took place, the reactions from the relevant authorities rather than give hope ended up creating anger and disbelief amongst all airport users.

In all honesty, FAAN in particularly really acted unprofessionally by rushing to debunk the incidents which automatically labelled the victims of the theft (Tiwa and Wizkid) as liars when it claimed that the preliminary findings from investigations conducted by an inter-agency committee set up to probe the two instances could not substantiate the claims of the robbery.

The reactions from FAAN and the airport police command is tantamount to an insult upon injury not only to the victims who suffered psychological and material losses but, to the entire traveling public whose intelligence have been played upon.

Looking at the calibers of Tiwa Savage and Wizkid, one may be tempted to ask FAAN what it thought the celebrities wanted to achieve by claiming their luggage were stolen if their luggage were not actually stolen.

For sure, FAAN has jumped the gun by claiming that the incident did not happen when similar incidents had actually happened in the past as attested to by many key players in the sector.

Just like many who spoke to Crucial Moment, a former Commandant of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Group Captain John Ojikutu agreed that such occurrence was common in the country’s aviation sector especially in the 1990s when he was the airport commandant.

His words: “So many aircraft had been poached in the past at that airport in the ‘90s till 1996 even up to the time of one of the past Managing Director of FAAN, Mr. Peter Igbinedion. When I got to the airport, the first thing that was happening was that people were removing the runway security lights and I said at that time that it could not be from outside, but insider’s job.”

FAAN should have therefore, realized that it will be impossible for it to deny the poaching incident hence, as expected, it should have done everything possible to get in touch with the victims and then thoroughly probe into it before rushing to deny it.

To say that FAAN has acted in an unprofessional way is very obvious and this action is responsible for the serious bashings and anger being vexed on the entire system by Nigerians presently.

It is therefore, at this juncture that the Crucial Moment is calling on FAAN and the country’s regulatory body, the NCAA to use this latest incidence as an opportunity to urgently re-examine and reappraise the security network at the airports rather than use ‘ogboju’ to cover up.

All the relevant authorities including the airport police command should count themselves lucky that it is a case of aircraft poaching and baggage theft that everyone is talking about now for if it were a life threatening matter, there would have been no escape route for them no matter the number of denial statements issued.

The issue is that if it could be that effortless for criminals to burgle an aircraft  and remove passengers’ luggage, then it will be very seamless for such criminals to plant a bomb on any targeted aircraft.

Now is the  time for relevant authorities to fight this dangerous monster to prevent an imminent and an avoidable calamity that may be made possible through sheer negligence.