Nigeria has safest safety record globally —DG NSIB

The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) has said that its quality probes into air accidents, serious incidents and timely release of safety reports have contributed to improved air safety in the country.

The bureau said that in the last 10 years, Nigeria’s airspace had only recorded two fatal civil air crashes, leading to the unfortunate loss of nine souls within the period.

Speaking on the topic ‘Nigeria evolving approach to aviation and learning from occurrence investigation’, at the just-concluded Aviation Summit 2023 in Abuja, the Director-General, NSIB, Mr Akin Olateru, confirmed how Nigeria had the safest safety record globally, a situation which he said has made Nigeria a force to reckon with in aviation matters.

He also pointed out that there is a downward trend from fatal accident to accident and now serious incident in the civil occurrences currently in Nigeria, saying: “In the last four years, Nigeria had only one accident per year in terms of classification.”

The NSIB DG mentioned Bristow Helicopters crash of 2015 and Quorum Helicopters accident of 2019 as the only two civil occurrences in which fatalities were so far recorded within the period.

Olateru, who maintained that Nigeria witnesses more incidents than accidents in the civil air mishaps these days, added that through the enhancement of soft systems being deployed in the conduct of probes into civil aviation occurrences and timely release of reports, the number of serious incidents would  reduce..

Olateru further announced the plans by the bureau, in collaboration with the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), to review and measure the effectiveness of all safety recommendations that had been issued over the years.

According to him, the purpose of this is to monitor their implementation through the setting up of committees, stressing that this would be unveiled in 2024 just as he clarified that this was not the first time NSIB would embark on such initiative, as the bureau, in 2020 under his leadership, organised similar programme.

He used the opportunity to unveil the plans by the bureau to make an arrangement through the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development, NCAA and relevant stakeholders to bring both local and foreign insurance firms for deliberation in order to address the issue of insurance premium of airlines in Nigeria in 2024.

According to Olateru; “It is necessary to engage stakeholders in the industry and the public on the need to report occurrences as they happen or you become aware of them through mandatory and voluntary reporting.”

This, he said formed part of the evolving approach of the bureau that led to a safer sky over Nigeria. The Aviation Africa Summit 2023, which was the first to be held in West African sub-region had about 1,500 participants from 75 countries.