FG approves new bill to empower AIB to probe rail, road, marine accidents

• Agency released 58% accident reports in two years

The Federal Executive Council had approved the proposal for the new draft bill of Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) to empower the bureau to investigate rail, road and marine accidents and serious incidents is currently before the Senate.

The AIB is taking after the United States National Transportation Board (NTSB), an independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the U.S. and significant accidents in other modes of transportation–railroad, highway, marine and pipeline.

AIB’s Commissioner, Akin Olateru, an aircraft engineer confirmed the development to journalists at a symposium held by the NTSB in conjunction with AIB in Lagos at the weekend.

Olateru noted that the FEC had approved its proposal for the new draft bill of AIB, adding that the bill was on the table at the upper chamber before the Senate went on recess.

“We are currently working on the possibility and the approval by the National Assembly of AIB going multimodal in our operations.

“Going multimodal means we are not just going to be investigating air accidents alone but we will be investigating rail, marine and road accidents. We will be joining other nations around the world who operate the multimodal system.

“Hopefully, before the end of this year, this bill will be passed and that will make AIB Nigeria one of the top nations that operate multimodal system,” he said.

He said the techniques of accident investigation whether it was road, rail, marine, or air was the same, while the end goal remained how to prevent future occurrence.

He said in preparation for the multimodal system in the last one year, AIB had sent 30 of its investigators to Cranfield University in the United Kingdom to train on the multimodal accident investigation.

He said they were all back in Nigeria and it had another two investigators going in September to complete the cycle.

He added that the organisation was also working closely with the U.S.-NTSB and Singapore-NTSB on training.

The AIB boss further disclosed that the agency since he assumed office 2017 had released 58 per cent of the total number of releases done since the creation of AIB in 2007.

The main reason AIB is set up, he reiterated was to investigate accidents and serious incidents and to  come up with safety recommendations to prevent future occurrence.

 “If you don’t release those reports on time, you are doing a disservice to the entire industry because there won’t be lessons learnt. How do you prevent the reoccurrence? By the time you are issuing your safety recommendations may be four or five years, the airline may not even be in operation any more”.

“When I assumed office, I said no report will go beyond 18 months except in an extremely special case which we have not had. We are like the backend of the operations unlike the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) that is visible. We influence safety through the backend. Our work is extremely important because we are the only institution that can investigate NCAA to see where there are lapses or gaps and to proffer safety recommendations to NCAA on how to do things better”.

Olateru noted that the country had Memorandum of Understanding with Sao Tome and Principe, France. While the MoU with Sao Tome and Principe empowered Nigeria’s AIB to investigate all plane crashes in the country, the pact with France was for AIB to help Francophone West Africa countries with accident investigations in their nations.

The AIB investigated the last accident in Sao Tome after inquiry was ceded to it to investigate.

I will start with the MOU. I will give you an example of the Sao Tome and Principe. AIB investigated that accident and final report was released 12 months after the crash.

“That is one thing strengthening your technical competence. Take France for instance, France wants Nigeria as a nation to help the Francophone African countries and their MOU is to look at how they can strengthen AIB either through training, equipment”.

“Come November, there is training dedicated for our investigators from France to go to France and learn something. Don’t forget, when you talk aviation, France is one of the leading countries in the world. They have majority shares in Airbus and there are many activities in France. There is so much we can learn from France”, he added.

Wole Shadare