Nigeria: Every reason to believe our airspace is not safe

These are not coincidences

I find myself trying to juxtapose the stark realities with the press briefings of bluster and vacuous lip service to performance and efficiency that dogs our aviation regulatory organisations in Nigeria.

In the aftermath of two events, a fatal crash in Lagos with flight 5N-BJY operated by Associated Aviation and flight 5N-JRM operated by Kabo Air in a near-miss, in Sokoto, the Aviation Minister insisted that the Nigerian air space is safe. [5N-BJY – Aviation Safety Network] [5N-JRM – Aviation Safety Network] [Daily Times]

Lapses in compliance

Along with the unfortunate, ‘Act of God’ comment posited by the Minister, in another report, she suggested broadly that there were “operational lapses and non-compliance with the policy”.

“What we did by suspending Dana’s operations is not making scapegoat of anyone. To suspend means that there must be operational lapses and non-compliance with the policy but it is always in tandem with international practice.” [This Day Live]

In the same report, she alluded to shared responsibilities and possibly gaps, and then she touched on a diverted return of another flight because the destination airport was closed as if either no flight plans were posted or other extenuating circumstances meant the trip could not be completed.

Having excoriated the people who have questioned reforms in the aviation sector, the Federal Government “also insisted that the safety and security of the sector cannot be fully achieved without funding.” The question then is whether there is adequate funding to ensure the safety and the security of our airspace.

The people in charge

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is empowered with “the Authority to regulate Aviation Safety without political interference, but also to carry out oversight functions of Airports, Airspace, Meteorological Services, etc. as well as economic regulations of the industry”. [NCAA]

Under the safety oversight functions of the NCAA, it is important to understand in detail what the NCAA does in Nigeria, the detail of which I have lifted from their website.

In Nigeria, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is the apex regulatory body, overseeing the activities of all airlines and their pilots, engineers and cabin staff, airports, airstrips and heliports, navigation aids, all service providers including the airport authority and the air traffic service provider, aviation training institutions, etc. NCAA watches over the entire industry. Its role can aptly be described as that of "general overseer" or "referee:' For want of a better sobriquet, NCAA has even been address as the "police" of the industry.

While all these are correct, NCAA is essentially a facilitator of compliance of aviation safety and economic regulations. [NCAA]

We are left in no doubt about where the responsibility for safety lies; it lies with the regulatory, oversight and policing operations of the NCAA.

Going in broke

Which takes us back to that question, the question of adequate funding, because another news story suggests that the NCAA is broke; the more serious allegation is that the NCAA inspectors take bribes; they are apparently taking bribes because of the non-payment of NCAA inspector allowances. [PM News Nigeria]

Now, there is no excuse for taking bribes to overlook the functions and the duties necessary to protect our aviation industry. From the basic checks through airworthiness of aircraft to safety procedures and all the elements of responsibility as stated by the Aviation Minister, we cannot condone the dereliction of duty leading to the unnecessary loss of lives.

What is key is that we must realise that there is a shared responsibility, there is a collective responsibility, pilots are responsible, operators are responsible, regulators are responsible, government is responsible and all these must work together otherwise there will be a gap in the system. [This Day Live]

Temptations and pressure

An unnamed NCAA inspector, talked of compromise safety, dwindling training, struggles to procure basic needs and much else.

“Aircraft inspectors’ allowances are not being paid as at when due, leaving us to the open temptations of bribe and compromise from corrupt and desperate airline operators who want their planes to fly at all costs.” [PM News Nigeria]

The source went on to say, “Some of us that are due for training overseas are asked to fund our training and come back for a refund after the training. This is absurd, and they keep saying they are broke.” [PM News Nigeria]

A crisis and great doubt

Taking all this together, we can assume as the very best there is a crisis in the Aviation Sector. The matter of safety is compromised by acts of men; those in management in the NCAA and probably the Aviation Ministry because the NCAA people cannot do their work without interference and inducement caused by not paying their allowances and not ensuring proper training.

This situation probably needs verification, but it cannot be left without investigation because it casts great doubt on the idea that Nigeria’s airspace is safe and the ICAO report that suggests Nigeria is way above average in compliance and regulatory management of her aviation industry.

At worst, we do have an emergency played out in the number of accidents and near misses that have made the news recently.

Related Blog

Nigeria: Acts of God in our Aviation Industry or Rank Incompetence?

Nigeria: Acts of God in our Aviation Industry or Rank Incompetence?

The power ignorant

I started this blog over five days ago and abandoned it after about 300 words because it seemed too difficult to write, but in another sense, it was not ripe for writing, it needed the incubation of time in passing and event to be ready – Now, I complete it with quite a number of links for reference.

Sometimes you wonder why Nigeria is plagued with a pestilence of elite in power that find ways to do the unfortunate, revel in the unmentionable and speak without consideration, emotion or feeling on matters that demand empathy, compassion and a sense of participation in our humanity.

An air of chaos

The last weekend greeted an air crash with the loss of lives on an Embraer 120RT Brasilia aircraft with registration 5N-BJY [Picture taken in August] operated by Associated Aviation in Lagos and a precarious event where landing gear tyres exploded on landing at Sokoto Airport (SKO/DNSO) of a Boeing 747-521B with registration 5N-JRM operated by Kabo Air. [BBC News] [Fox News] [Aviation Safety Network]

A former Aviation minister recently listed a series of air disasters over the last few decades that indicated issues with the aviation industry, its infrastructure, its management and its regulation, but I am not here to cover that. [Nigerian Eye] [Timeline - ChannelsTV] [Nigerian Air Accidents – Aviation Safety Network]

A siege mentality

My concern is with the inability of the current regime to recognise a serious and possible crisis with the aviation sector, assume responsibility that suggests an understanding of all the elements whilst implementing ideas, strategy, and plans to ensure that air disasters do not become the norm in Nigeria.

The government needs to emerge from its siege bunker and take a whiff of the air everyday Nigerians breathe whilst taking a sure grip of reality, coming out on the defensive to excoriate those asking difficult and uncomfortable questions of the Minister, the Ministry and other regulatory bodies is hardly the solution we need at this pressing time.

Safe to avoid?

In a news story yesterday, the Federal Government Insists Nigeria’s Airspace is Safe, I suppose if we ignore everything that has happened recently in terms of air crashes, one might be tempted to agree, but this is far from the truth. [Daily Times]

In aftermath of the crashes, we read of the immediate suspension of Dana Air’s operating licence; why they ever had the suspension in the aftermath of the June 3^rd 2013 crash promptly lifted remains a mystery. [The Nation]

By Monday, the Aviation Minister, Princess Stella Oduah, flailing and swinging with vehemence and fury, first dismissed her predecessor with the words to the effect that he was “a drunk and a drug addict”, and accentuated that with the view that his comments “had little bearing with reality”.

Then she proceeded to give us her version of the bearings with reality of the Aviation Industry. Starting with a lamentation about security, safety and funding; implying the inadequacy of the former; then cosmetics of airport architecture before brandishing an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) assessment that gave Nigeria a 65% rating [61%] and position of the 12^th safest aviation space in the world. [Daily Times] [The ICAO 2013 Safety Report - PDF] [Leadership Nigeria]

Act of God unproven

On the accident itself, she said and these words below:

“We do not pray for accidents but it is inevitable. But all we do is to do everything to ensure that we do not have accidents. But is an act of God! Again, we do not speculate on the cause of accidents until that happens you can say this is the cause or that is not the cause.

But what is obvious and is the truth is that, in aviation there are shared responsibilities, starting from the man that carries your luggage to the man that make sure that your boarding pass is issued to you. And so the regulatory agency, the operators, the management, everybody has their responsibility and all must work in tandem for there to be an optimal, secured and safe aviation sector. And that is what we have been working.” [Daily Times]

The Aviation suggests accidents are inevitable [(Adjective) - certain to happen; unavoidable; (Noun) - a situation that is unavoidable.], then in the morass of the inevitability of accidents in Nigeria’s safe airspace, these accidents are apparently Acts of God [Forces of nature completely outside the realm of control of man, inexplicable and left in the helpless hands of fate.]

We must clearly understand what is an Act of God – “An event that directly and exclusively results from the occurrence of natural causes that could not have been prevented by the exercise of foresight or caution; an inevitable accident.” [The Free Dictionary]

For an air crash to be remotely termed an “Act of God”, there has to have been nothing humanly possible to avoid the accident by reason of foresight or caution, to which I would add warning or instruction.

Acts of pilots - I

The first indication of human error with respect to Sokoto Airport incident, suggest the pilot ignored instructions from Air Traffic Control to land on runway 08, the plane landed on runway 26 damaging Instrument Landing System aerials and thereby sustaining deflated tyres. [Leadership Nigeria] [Aviation Safety Network]

We can safety say that the Kabo Air incident that led to the suspension of the said pilot was no ‘Act of God’.

Acts of pilots - II

In addition, on the release of a preliminary report with respect to 5N-BJY, the Embraer 120RT Brasilia Associated Aviation operated aircraft crash in Lagos, the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) warned the pilots of instrument conditions essential to safe take-off, which they ignored. [The Scoop] [AIB Preliminary Report - PDF]

These warnings included, three audible chimes then “Take-off Flaps…Take-off Flaps”. The report suggests, “This is a configuration warning that suggests that the flaps were not in the correct position for take-off and there is some evidence that the crew may have chosen not to use flaps for the take-off.”

As the crew, assimilated, understood, reacted and ignored these warnings, the report documents the following, from the aircraft automated voice “’Take off Flaps, Auto Feather’. Auto feather refers to the pitch of the propeller blades.  In the feather position, the propeller does not produce any thrust.” [Basics on Flap Aircraft - Wikipedia] [Autofeather - Wikipedia]

This report indicates that the pilots were aware of a whole range of circumstances that informed the need to abort take-off but proceeded to ignore the basic science of essential power for airlift and consequently crashed the airplane – this again was no ‘Act of God’.

We have problems

The week presented a catalogue of problems with our aviation industry in Nigeria which the Aviation Minister succinctly put forward as – “What is key is that we must realise that there is a shared responsibility, there is a collective responsibility, pilots are responsible, operators are responsible, regulators are responsible, government is responsible and all these must work together otherwise there will be a gap in the system.” [This Day Live]

There are gaps in the system, in fact, too many gaps that indicate poor regulatory oversight leading to knee-jerk responses after disasters. Then possible pilot training deficiencies exhibited in their ignoring air traffic control or aircraft instrument instructions; airworthiness and safety issues and a minister whose penchant for verbosity appears to demonstrate activity and performance but the evidence must always be in how safe it is to fly in Nigeria.

Honestly!

More pertinently, we cannot have a minister quick to suggest the inevitability of air disasters to ‘Acts of God’ when the reports suggest without equivocation that the most recent disasters are clearly pilot errors, which could have led to the loss of almost 600 lives in one weekend.

However, where we celebrate mediocrity, exertion without effect and incompetence as great achievement, we cannot expect the change we need in our aviation industry for the better and that is very sad, indeed.

May the souls of those dearly departed because of this rotten and atrocious dereliction of responsibility of all involved rest in peace.

Nigeria: English cock-up at Babcock University

Giving honour

It is commendable that Mallam Nuhu Ribadu [1] has returned a free man to Nigeria, restored to all the honours and accolades he deserves and is being conferred [2] with an Honorary Doctorate in Law degree by Babcock University.

As the news bulletin states, A letter by the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kayode Makinde, said the award was in recognition of Ribadu’s "loyal breeding," "lofty aim" and "resolute courage" as well as his "fierce stance against corruption"

The Aha moment

I had always wondered about the seemingly foreign name of the university sited in Ilishan just about 10 kilometres from my village Ijesha-Ijebu in Ogun State. Ilishan is maybe about 10 kilometres from Ikenne the hometown of long dead famous Nigerian luminaries as Dr. Tai Solarin and Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

In any case, I decided to find out more about the university and first went for the Wikipedia entry [3] before going to its website. Apparently, Babcock University is a Christian university under the auspices of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church [4] and named for an American missionary, David C. Babcock, who pioneered Seventh-Day Adventism in Nigeria in 1914.

On visiting their homepage, I was regaled with music; I could not find the button to stop but decided to have a curious surf as one does when seeking trivia about organisations.

Unforgiveable errors

This blog was inspired by an unfortunate lack of attention to particular detail that one would expect a university with an intake of thousands of students aspiring to careers in Education, Humanities, Law, Social Sciences and Technology.

What is the point of an education that has no academic rigour and in this case the matter of proofreading when it comes to published material is of the essence or that institution, no matter its aims or goals has no business in the delivery of tertiary education.

It is bad enough that the letter supposedly penned by the Vice-Chancellor or his office did not realise that “lofty aim” would have better been “lofty aims”, but the sacrilege to education which meets my unforgivable stare is that where the core beliefs of that noble citadel of learning has unlearnt itself with the title Our Believe [5]. That represents the core values of the university by which it gains the authority to stand as a Christian institution of higher learning.

Good grammar is a sign of distinction

Regardless of the version of English we portend to use, the correct usage should be one of, We Believe, Our Belief or Our Beliefs – the third option being the most correct in context. The nuances of 1^st person plural with verbs or the role adjectives in modifying nouns which is attributive in this case should be a core part of the either the Department Of Languages And Literary Studies or English Studies - B.A. (Hons) courses.

The offending title captured as a graphic on the Babcock University website on the 6th of June 2010 © Babcock University

The issue here is not just of being able to communicate but by reason of being a university the facetiousness of correctness and the pedantry that it entails must not be a labour to be handled with levity.

At worst, a proofreading committee or society must be formed consisting of staff and capable students to ensure that all that is globally available on the Babcock University website is reviewed and edited for syntax, semantics, context, content, correct usage, grammar and spelling.

If a university cannot commit itself to this standard of perfection, I wonder what other institution should, the online newspapers are a disaster.

Now, I am no English major, but it is my mother-tongue by reason of birth nor do I consider my copy error-free, but I am no university entrusted with the impressionable minds of hungry-for-knowledge students who can be short-changed with sloppy standards and poor attention to detail – I hope my next visit to the Babcock University website would impress for a recant of this blog.

Comments followed this blog, here Nigeria: Ike follows the Babcock University Cock-up Too

Sources

[1] Nuhu Ribadu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Ribadu Honoured | The Nation Online

[3] Babcock University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Seventh-day Adventist Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Babcock University : Our Believe

O'Bama - Osama - Oh Bummer - Obama

Where’s Obama?

Sometimes, one has to resist the temptation to keep an open mind about an issue and nowhere is this most pertinent when innocuous spelling errors convey a radically different meaning from the main import.

This comes about in the light of the apology that CNN has issued during a programme hosted by Wolf Blitzer where a caption "Where's Obama?" appeared with Osama bin Laden being pictured.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars.com

Obama happens to be the surname of the photogenic Afro-American senator who seems to be a promising prospect for US presidency probably 8 to 12 years from now, in my reckoning. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.

It smacks of rank sloppiness to have had a typographical error on names so prominent especially one that seems juxtapose “America’s most wanted man” with “America’s most promising future president”.

We are continually told that Osama bin Laden is the “World’s most wanted man”, I think not. China, India, Nigeria, Brazil and Russia have significant populations and there is no reason to desire the man for anything, America was the most affected by his atrocities, we should put that in context.

Names of the immigrants

However, for a country that was built and exists as land of immigrants, the time has passed when immigrants who moved to the US anglicised their names to appear conformed and integrated.

Time and again, we see names like Milorad Blagojevich, the governor of the state of Illinois or the popular California governor, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, a former president Eisenhower and even the culprit Wolf Blitzer where Wolf is probably a contraction of Wolfgang – all hardly native American – but no one exerts pressure on them to recode their names for simplification.

Oh Lordy, O’Bama

Senator Barrack Obama has however suffered much for his name, I remember the Economist suggesting before he was elected that he might be more electable as O'Bama – balderdash!

Our names are our identities, no matter how tongue-twistingly impossible they might be to others, there is no valid reason to adopt some alien pseudonym in craving acceptance, if your personality and quality of character shines through, people would endeavour to get your name as correct as they dare to.

From a more sinister perspective, this slip might have been a deliberate effort to denigrate Senator Obama, having created an image that exemplifies the revulsion of terror when America was almost brought to its knees – there should be much that CNN should be sorry for – this is the kind of thing as one commentator said would be seen on FOX News, well, we have just reached a new low point in reckless journalism.

The errors of our constitution

This reminds me of an episode in 1984 when I was the student representative of the EE II constituency in the Yaba College of Technology. I had obtained a copy of the Students Union constitution just at the time that the newly elected president, Kola Oladoja offered to make copies of the constitution for the members of the House.

When that constitution arrived, it contained 47 major errors which made it look like a rewrite of the constitution without following due process.

I was livid with rage that an elected official who had sworn to protect the constitution now seemed to have created his own constitution and I moved a motion to first pulp the material and then discipline the president, unfortunately, the officials of the house did not seem to realise the gravity of this offence.

Negating the context

In the 28 spelling errors, there were sentences like, “The official shall resent …” when it should be “The official shall present …”, the use of may when it should be must, perceive for receive – very much negating context, such that officers could not be brought to account on many pertinent issues.

This failure to deal with the breach of trust and confidence because of the unusual popularity of the President of the Students Union lead to a situation many months after when leading a student protest on the campus, the crowd lost discipline and grew riotous damaging campus property that the college was closed for months.

Our lesson

The fallout included many of us vocal political voices repeating years study which for me came to nought, the president himself was rusticated and it was rumoured that he probably came to an untimely end.

This, all because we did not have the guts to challenge the errors in our constitution, which should have lead to the instant impeachment of the president.

No, I do not take these errors lightly, and the one against Senator Obama is a slight almost unforgivable.