Emmanuel Aziken
27 October 2009
Abuja — PRESIDENT of the Senate, Chief David Mark and a delegation of Nigerian Senators on an oversight visit to Sudan survived an air emergency, yesterday, after the landing right of their military plane was cancelled mid-air by the Sudanese authorities.
The Senators who were to visit the 3,000-strong Nigerian peacekeeping troops in Darfur, Sudan, returned to Abuja yesterday after a brief landing in the Chadian capital, N'djamena.
The Senators were fuming over what they regarded as a major slight to Nigeria and its number three citizen, but praised the courage and experience of Senator Mark, himself, a licensed pilot in navigating them out of the ugly encounter.
However, the Sudanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Awad Musrsitaha, was apologetic yesterday over the development, blaming it on what he described as an unscheduled maintenance at the Khartoum airport.
The Senate delegation led by Senator Mark and comprising the Chairman of the Senate committee on Defence (Army), Senator Ibrahim Ida; his deputy, Senator Chris Anyanwu; Chairman, Senate committee on Air Force, Senator Idris Umar and Senator Caleb Zagi, Vanguard learnt, departed Abuja at 7.00 a.m. in a military plane for Sudan.
Midway into the 3-hour 40-minute flight, the pilot of the Nigerian plane made contact with Khartoum but was told that the landing right had been deferred till 1.00 p.m. local time.
Caught unawares, the Nigerians resorted to N'djamena, capital of Chad where the development was appraised and decision taken to return to Abuja.
The implication, one member of the Senate delegation told Vanguard yesterday, was that the Senators could have been put at risk as the possibility that the aviation fuel in the plane would ensure a safe return to Abuja was not guaranteed.
"It took the experience of the Senate President himself a pilot to help us to navigate our way and that is how we got to N'djamena from where we decided to return," the Senator said yesterday.
"This kind of unfriendly act must be condemned and if they could do that to a Senate delegation, including the country's number three citizen, you could well imagine what they could do to other citizens," the Senator fumed yesterday.
"This kind of intemperate behaviour as demonstrated by the Sudanese authorities must be condemned especially in the light of Nigeria's role in stabilising the situation in Darfur," the lawmaker added.
The Sudanese Ambassador perhaps caught up in preparations for the arrival of President Bashir on Thursday responded to Vanguard yesterday afternoon after more than 15 calls describing the situation as an unfortunate development to a trip he said the embassy had jointly planned with the Senate.
"It is an unfortunate incident. We as an embassy have in the past two weeks been in contact with the Senate to prepare for this visit because we really value our relationship with Nigeria," Ambassador Musrsitaha said.
"Having prepared for this visit, we have made all arrangements and the Senate and the delegation were supposed to meet the President of the Republic but we didn't know that there was a sort of maintenance at the Khartoum airport," he said.
President Bashir's visit to Nigeria at the invitation of President Umaru Yar'Adua for the African Union Peace and Security Council meeting commencing on Thursday in Abuja has been the subject of much criticism by local and international civil society groups on account of the international arrest warrant issued against the Sudanese leader by the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
President Bashir is accused of complicity in the genocide against the African population of Darfur in Western Sudan.
The ICC had on March 5, 2009 issued an international arrest warrant against President al-Bashir with a charge to all countries within the international community to apprehend the Sudanese leader.
The subject of the international arrest warrant was interestingly the subject of a long discourse between Sudanese officials and members of the Nigeria Senate delegation to the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last April.
"He is an international fugitive from justice, charged with responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Africans. It would be shameful of Nigeria to offer him safe haven," Mr. Kolawole Olaniyan, Amnesty International's Africa Legal Adviser said in reaction to the invitation by President Yar'Adua to al-Bashir to visit Abuja.
Special Adviser to the Senate President on Media, Mr. Kola Ologbondinyan, could not be reached on the development yesterday as repeated phone calls to his phone were not answered.
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