 |
| Pix 1: A teenage boy, Daniel Ihekina, who hid in the Tyre hole of Arik Air flying from Benin to Lagos. Pix 2: The boy being led away by security agents. |
THE teenage stowaway, Daniel
Ihekina, who was arrested at the Lagos Airport after flying in the tyre hole of
an Arik plane from Benin to Lagos on Saturday morning, thought he was on a
US-bound flight.
A source at the Benin Airport who
disclosed this said the boy’s parents had already departed for Lagos in search
of the stowaway.
The airport source, who did not
want his name in print said, “From what we heard, the boy said he was being
maltreated and tried to escape from his parents. He thought he was on his way
to the US.
“The parents have travelled to
Lagos by road, to get him back.”
Meanwhile, investigations
conducted by one of our correspondents in Lagos revealed that the boy had been
handed over to the operatives of the State Security Services for further
investigation.
The General Manager, Corporate
Communications, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. Yakubu Dati, who
also confirmed the development, said the aviation security personnel of the
agency had handed over the young voyager to the men of the SSS for extensive
investigation.
Dati said, “The residential
address the boy gave to us was traced to a church in Benin by our airport
manager and his team. So, there is need to hand over the teenager to the SSS
who are experts in such investigations. They will carry out further
investigation on the matter.”
The FAAN spokesman said the
nature and circumstances surrounding the crime informed the agency decision to
hand over the stowaway to the SSS operatives.
Meanwhile, following the Benin
Airport incident, FAAN has adopted the ‘risk amelioration processes to
safeguard flight operations’ at all its 22 airports across the country.
Dati stressed that the agency had
tightened its risk amelioration procedure to ensure that similar incident did
not occur again.
He also said the agency had prioritized
the perimeter fencing of all the 22 airports in the country.
“In the meantime, we have adopted
risk amelioration processes to safeguard flight operations. As a result of this
incident in Benin, we have further tightened our risk amelioration procedure to
ensure that a similar incident does not occur,” he said.
However, FAAN has also continued
to trade blame with Arik Air over the Benin incident.
The agency, in a statement on
Sunday, said it read with “great dismay the statement released by Arik Airlines
about the stowaway found on board Arik’s flight 544 from Benin to Lagos on
Saturday 24 August, 2013.”
Dati said FAAN was “unfairly
indicted” while the airline took no responsibility whatsoever for such a
“serious security breach.”
FAAN said its preliminary
investigation had revealed that Arik did not give accurate account of the Benin
Airport incident.
Giving the accounts of its
preliminary findings, FAAN said, “Our investigations reveal that a passenger on
board the flight called the attention of the cabin crew while the aircraft was
waiting to take off at the threshold of the runway, to the effect that they had
seen a young boy walk under the aircraft and had not seen him re-appear on the
other side.”
“The cabin crew in turn informed
the pilots in the cockpit about this. The pilots called the control tower and
asked them to request FAAN to do a sweep of the area after their departure,
opting to carry on with their flight despite the report.”
“Upon the arrival of the aircraft
in Lagos, we were informed that there had been a stowaway found alive alighting
from the wheel well of the aircraft. While FAAN takes this security breach
extremely seriously, we deem Arik’s attempt at indicting and smearing FAAN as
irresponsible. Safety and security breaches occur when all the checks in the
system are beaten. Given that security
is a responsibility for all players in this industry, a critical last
opportunity to detect and prevent this stowaway was offered and had the airline
taken the information by passengers as seriously as they should have, this
incident would have been avoided.”
-PUNCH
No comments:
Post a Comment