|
|
Nigeria: Missing Aircraft - Cameroon Shuns Nigeria's Request
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
This Day (Lagos)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Chinedu Eze
Lagos
Efforts by Nigerian authorities to search Cameroonian territory for the missing Beechcraft 1900D aircraft owned by Wings Aviation may have hit a stonewall.
THISDAY checks revealed that Nigeria has written a dozen letters to the Cameroonian aviation authorities seeking permission to search the country but they are yet to respond.
The aircraft was declared missing on Saturday, March 15, with its three-member crew, on its way from Lagos to Obudu Cattle Ranch.
All search efforts have so far proved unsuccessful.
The new theory being worked upon by the Nigeria authorities is that the aircraft might have strayed into a military zone in Cameroon and might have been shot down, going by the uneasy relations between the two countries.
A government official told THISDAY late last night that the refusal of the Cameroonian authorities to respond to communication from Nigeria is fuelling suspicion that they might have shot down the plane.
"It is normal protocol that if an incident of this nature occurs, two countries share intelligence and co-operate on search efforts. It is very curious that the Cameroonians are not co-operating with us," the official said.
It is also feared that because of the delicate relationship between the two countries, Cameroon may be reluctant to allow search operations because of its military installations at the border.
It is even believed that the French military has a base near the Cross River State border with Cameroon because of the conflict over the Bakassi Peninsula.
Senior industry officials told THISDAY yesterday that the NAMA report on the incident has suggested that security agencies should be involved in the search operations in the neighbouring countries because it believed strongly that the aircraft might have left the country.
This is given strength by Air Traffic Controllers' report that disclosed that the pilot of the aircraft, Capt. Augustine Agbedi flew through Ecrop, which is the boundary town between Nigeria and Cameroon, instead of the more popular route to Bebi airstrip.
Also in the notification the government of Cross River state made to the Federal Gove-rnment, it stated that it had combed the nooks and crannies of the state and had found nothing.
A senior NAMA official also expressed doubts that the aircraft crashed because the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) did not trigger off a signal to indicate its location.
Wings Aviation had said, shortly after the aircraft went missing, that the instrument was installed in the aircraft and that it was working perfectly when the aircraft took off for Bebi airstrip.
It has also been noted that all through the communication between the pilot of the aircraft and the air traffic controllers, there was never a moment's "mayday" or distress call from the pilot and, according to NAMA records, the pilot called the Bebi airstrip to get weather information before he Port Harcourt and then Enugu.
A top official of NAMA, when asked about how an aircraft could disappear and not be seen for days, said: "It can happen again and again because the infrastructure is not there. If there is a means of surveillance like the radar, the controllers would have noticed it leaving the country or descending, so we rely on pilot's position reports."
In other words, a pilot would be telling the controllers where he was, but if he is not telling the truth, his actual position would not be known because Nigeria does not have the radar or the automatic dependence surveillance broadcast "that transmits the aircraft's position automatically in form of data wherever it is".
The NAMA source said that if there was radar coverage, the wreckage of the Bellview flight of 2006 at Lisa, Ogun States, would have been located moments after it crashed.
|
The source said that the functions of NAMA include the prevention of collision between aircraft on the manoeuvring area such as taxi-way and the runway; to expedite and maintain orderly flow of air traffic; provide advice and information useful for the safe and efficient conduct of flights and notify appropriate organisations regarding aircraft in need of search and rescue and assist such organisations in that regard.
"Search and rescue by NAMA is recommended by ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) but it is done through the radar or by calculation, not physically. The pilot of the Beechcraft called Bebi and collected weather information before it communicated with Port Harcourt," he said.
On why NAMA is not managing the airstrip at Bebi, the source said that the government of Cross River State refused to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the agency, noting that unlike in the past when government pays subvention to the parastatal, it is now sustaining itself and receives payment for the services it renders to airstrip and airport operators.
AH AH AH NIGERIA THATS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU GO TO BED WITH A DEVIL,BEFORE YOU REALISE, THE DEVIL IS POOKING YOUR EYES WIH HIS LONG NAILS, OBASANJO SOLD BAKASSI TO FENCH MEN FOR 30M DOLLARS AND BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS WHICH AHD BEEN COLONIZED BY FRENCH CAMEROONS, NOW YOU AE COMPLAINING, JUST WAIT YOU HAVE HEARD ANY THING YET, WHEN THOS BASTARDS WILL START TORTURING AND RAPING NIGERIANS IN BAKASSI AND CROSS RIVER YOU WIL KNOW THAT REALLY THERE IS A DIFFRENCE BETWEEN BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONIANS AND CAMEROONIANS,
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
