The Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) and the Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency (BAGAIA) have entered into a partnership in a bid to improve the capacity of Safety Investigation Agencies.
Speaking in Abuja at the closing of a peer review programme hosted by the NSIB, the Commissioner, Engr. Akin Olateru said the aim of the programme is to boost the capability of Agencies in the Investigation of Civil Aviation Accidents and Serious Incidents.
“Today brings to an end the European Union (EU), EASA/ BAGAIA programme in Nigeria. Nigeria has been chosen as a pilot, We are the first to have this programme. It is an EU-sponsored programme .
“What has been happening since Monday is basically in two parts, one is to do what we call peer review. Peer review is to benchmark systems, processes, and procedures to help us see how we do things here and how we can improve on the way we do things. This part of the programme is to see how we can improve and benchmark our systems, processes, and procedures with the EU standards.
“Now the second part is to train our investigators on how to carry out peer review so that we can help other nations, and at the end of the day, this is to enhance safety, not just in Nigeria, but the entire African region. This programme is basically for collaboration. You know aviation is all about collaboration. This is the only way we can ensure consistency in maintaining that safety record,” he stated.
The Commissioner of BAGAIA, Engr. Charles Erhuah, in his address, said the programme would enable Member States to meet their safety Regulations and ICAO Annex 13 requirements.
“One important achievement of BAGAIA in the last few years has been zero accident/ hull losses in our individual airspaces. This has improved our collective safety records and has removed our airlines from various blacklists worldwide.
“This means our individual and collective safety recommendations are being heeded, and they are helping to create a safer Airspace.”
He further stated, ‘We will also look at how we can infuse technology to make our primary responsibility seamless and also ensure we have well-trained investigators who will midwife a new set of investigators into the field to create capacity that will replace our fast-aging breed of professionals.
“As we commence this review, may our commitment towards a safer sky for our states, the BAG region, and indeed the globe not waiver as whatever we do here will resound in the echoes of time and have a safety impact on generations to come,” Erhuah noted.