Funding and collaboration among African countries is key to delivering safer skies on the continent and for its air transport sector to deliver as a catalyst for economic development. The Chief Executive Officer/Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), Akin Olateru, says to acieve this requires a mix of capacity development, right equipment, processes and systems. He spoke with select aviation reporters. KELVIN OSA OKUNBOR was there.
What has changed in the agency since you came in 2017?
I will start by saying this. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, all the actions you take in life are majorly influenced by two things: first, your beliefs and second, your values. These two components in a way shape our decisions in life and, in turn, shape our lives. That is life. When I came in, in January 2017, AIB was at its lowest ebb. I inherited disgruntled staff, a poorly-funded agency. An agency of government you can say, in terms of performance, scored below 35 per cent. Today, I stand tall because of our achievements since we came into government.
When I came in, we had to work on our beliefs and values. On the human elements or human capital, we did a lot and part of the improvements we made in our human capital was training and retraining, changing the mindset of our investigators.
We moved away from our individualistic way of doing things to a group way of doing things, training them to know the effect of good team work.
How have you leveraged team work and collaboration to enhance capacity development ?
These are one of the key things we concentrated on. In doing that, we needed the assistance and support of great institutions around the world. It makes sense to learn from the best and we approached some nations, institutions at that time. I stand today to tell you that the United States Government has been our greatest ally and greatest supporters through the National Transport Safety Bureau (NTSB). They have been in reality a major pillar of support. They have supported us with everything humanly possible through the Managing Director then, Mr. Dennis Jones, who has been to Nigeria to train our investigators with his team. The US government through the Safe Skies for Africa programme supported us immensely. We have other nations who didn’t believe in us. I really sincerely want to thank the US government, especially the NTSB and, most especially Mr. Dennis Jones, who is a gift to the world. He has been a major pillar of support. Without them, maybe, we won’t be where we are.
How many memorandum of understanding did Accident Investigation Bureau sign with other countries?
Today, we have nations signing Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with Nigeria, believing in what we do and want to emulate us, want us to support them. They want us to work with them, they want to share from our experience. We have South Africa, we have Saudi Arabia, we have Gabon. Tshere are talks ongoing on partnership with these nations. Currently, we have signed an MoU with France, Benin Republic, Sao Tome and Principe and in the next one month, we will be signing with Saudi Arabia. These are great nations. But to me, you must have something sellable; you must have something they see in you that they admire in you before they want to sign an MoU with you.
What is the infrastructure profile of the Bureau ?
In terms of infrastructure, you will agree with me that there are four key elements to that irrespective of the industry or the sector. The four major components are human capital, infrastructure, equipment and systems processes and procedure. You need to score seven and half over 10 in each of these components. It takes time to build all these four key elements. Today, I can tell you in terms of equipment, AIB is one of the best in the world. I thank the Senator Hadi Sirika, the past Minister of State for Transportation, now Minister of Aviation, for his belief and support for making it happen. We are rated among the first 10 in the world in terms of equipment and capabilities. Our flight safety laboratory in terms of equipment, we are rated one of the best. In terms of infrastructure, we are rated 7/10.
What is the human capital component like in the Bureau ?
In terms of human capital, we have over 30 well-trained investigators in Nigeria. The whole of West Africa has no fewer than 30 investigators. So, you can understand the number. In terms of systems and processes, we are rated 8/10. We are independent. This is one thing that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) calls for nations to have accident investigation bureau that is independent of the civil aviation authority and that was passed by the parliament in 2006 through the Civil Aviation Act 2006, which gave birth to AIB.
When will AIB be multimodal in terms of accident investigation?
We are working on the possibility and the approval of AIB going multimodal. Going multimodal means we are going to be investigating not just the air accident, we are going to be investigating rail accidents, we are going to be investigating marine accidents and road accidents. We are joining nations around the world who operate this multimodal system of operations.
How did this come about ?
Last year, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved our proposal – the new draft bill for AIB. Before the Senate went on recess, this bill is already in the Senate and hopefully, before the end of this year, this bill will be passed and that would make AIB Nigeria one of the top nations that do multimodal. We have reviewed just two months ago, we reviewed that to take care of all those gaps.
If you stay stagnant, the world will go past you. I came in January 2017, if you count the number of reports we have released, they are all on our website. AIB, since 2017, has released 58 per cent of the total number of releases done since the creation of the agency since 2007. In terms of release of final reports, we have done 58 per cent. The main reason AIB is set up is 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 to learn. How do you prevent the reoccurrence? By the time you are issuing your safety recommendations, may be four or five years later, the airline may not even be in operation. 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.
What ground work have you done on the multimodal system you are proposing?
When you look at accident investigation, the techniques are the same; whether it is marine or rail, the techniques are the same. How do we prevent future occurrence? When I said training, in the last one year, we have sent 30 of our investigators to Cranfield University to train on multimodal accident investigation. They are back in Nigeria. We have another two going in September to complete the cycle. We are working closely with the US NTSB. Singapore NTSB is working with us on this. As we speak, we have a relationship with NTSB, as some of our investigators go there for on-the-job-training, just to learn on the job, not just read books or sit in the classroom, but to actually be present with the US investigators to support us on that. Another thing you have to understand is that we will take on some rail staff from Nigeria Railways Corporation (NRC), the same thing with maritime and road and train them on how to investigate accidents properly. Those are the programmes we have in place to ensure we get there. It is not going to happen overnight. It takes time to build institutions. I can confidently say to you that AIB is a world-class institution.
How comfortable will it be for AIB to investigate incidents or accidents in other modes of transportation when they don’t have FDR, CVR?
Most ships have devices in the form of recording systems, but for cars, no. However, there are better ways to investigate car accidents beyond a recorder.
I want to look at what your manpower will be when you begin with the multi-modal project? Will you be operating from the airport here?
Currently, if you understand how we were set up, we have four office locations in the country. We are in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Kano. You don’t build Rome in one day. This will be a gradual process. We need to first of all utilise the maximum of what we have first before we do a proper need assessment whether we are going to increase our point or we are good at four points, but these are decisions that will be taken in a later stage. I cannot really comment on that now.
The Safe Skies for Africa Programme sponsored by the US Government in the past 21 years has finally come to an end. What do you think can be done among African nations to sustain this safety and security initiative?
Today comes the end of our programme where we brought in African nations to join us in aviation safety programme sponsored by AIB in conjunction with Safe Skies Africa, which is a department of transportation and the NTSB. Unfortunately, the programme has come to an end. The US government will no longer sponsor the safe skies programme. It is very unfortunate. Africa has really benefited from this programme and I think we, Africans, should put heads together on how we can help ourselves. We have the African Development Bank (AfDB), which under corporate social responsibility can take up this programme to help Africans. When an aeroplane goes down, it does not distinguish nations. This is why we owe it to ourselves, the whole world, to work together and strengthen aviation and make it a safer place to be.
Why do you think the US Government decided to end the Safer Skies for Africa programme and how can AfDB come in?
That is a very good one. I cannot speak on behalf of the US government on why they decided to stop sponsoring or funding the Safe Skies project for Africa. All I know is that we were told that the project has stopped. On AfDB, I make bold to say, this is my initiative of getting them to sponsor this project to the benefits of African nations. I had a meeting with Bernard Aliu, the President of the International Civil Aviation Organisaton (ICAO) two months ago in Montreal, Canada. I had a discussion with him on how AfDB can continue to be sponsoring this project through ICAO because AfDB will not just release money to AIB, it has to be an independent organisation, which is ICAO and it is not only for Nigeria, but to African nations.
There will be another meeting in the next ICAO Assembly on the clear-cut modality to get this done. Talks are still on, on how to make this work.
Earlier, you spoke about the various MoUs AIB has signed with some countries. Could you tell us what these MoUs tend to achieve?
I will give you an example of the Sao Tome and Principe. The last accident that occurred in Sao Tome was ceded to Nigeria to investigate. We investigated that accident and the final report was released 12 months after the accident. That gave my investigators some kind of exposure. You need to understand what accident investigation is all about. There are no two accidents that are the same. They may look alike, but if you look critically, you will see that there are other things you need to learn as you go along. That is one thing strengthening your technical competence. Take France, for instance. France wants Nigeria 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.
Take Saudi Arabia, for instance; it is just because of the ongoing hajj, our agreement would have been signed because we have got ‘okay clearance’ from the Ministry of Justice to go ahead and sign the agreement. Saudi Arabia has some expertise that we need and they are happy to come to Nigeria to train our team on that.
What area will the training address ?
What they will be coming to train us on is looking beyond the Flight Data Recorder and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). We have met; we have discussed everything on the CVR and FDR. You need to look beyond that and that can help to make your report much better.
For the Republic of Benin, what they have signed is to say whenever there is an accident, we should come and help them. They don’t have anything on ground, so they told us, if we have training, we should please include them. We have an agreement with Gambia through Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency (BAGAIA). Today, we have helped Gambia to set up an accident investigation agency. We supported them in writing their regulations, the Act, the whole work. We even helped them with our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). They came to Nigeria, they sat with us and we put them through. Today, it has been passed by their parliament. These are the kind of things we are doing to help them.
Earlier, you said when you came on board in 2017, you met a bureau that was poorly funded. Is the bureau properly funded today?
If you look at most government institutions, they are funded from the government coffers, but through the ingenuity of the past Minister of State Aviation, vis-a-vis the challenges of AIB at the time, we came up with a modality, which was more of a stop gap measure, a temporary arrangement to fund AIB’s operations through a special intervention fund. But, the permanent solution to that is once our bill is approved and that is when we are going to have a permanent solution in terms of proper funding.
A committee was set up recently to find out how your recommendations assist with safety. Are you satisfied with that?
I was the chairman of that committee to look into the implementation and effectiveness of those safety recommendations that AIB has issued since inception and we came up with the final result of 62 per cent of safety recommendations that were implemented. Partially implemented were 18 per cent and the rest were not. You need to understand one thing. Safety recommendations can be issued to an airline. For instance, there was a helicopter crash, the first safety recommendation issued to that company was a Bell Helicopter. Unfortunately, the company went burst even before the safety recommendations came out.Will you count that that was implemented? The answer is no. Some safety recommendations may not be implemented because of cost.
What is the realationship with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority?
For us and NCAA, I have had a meeting with the Director-General of NCAA, we have agreed on how to work on an MoU basis. We have sent in a proposal and we are waiting for his response because AIB and NCAA need to work together as a team on MoU that will guide our relationship. For clarity sake, I have read some things in the newspapers when somebody said NCAA doesn’t have to implement AIB’s recommendations. It is either the person doesn’t understand aviation or how things work from AIB’s perspective or just trying to be mischievous. I will tell you the process.
What is the procedure adopted before accident reports are released?
When we are done with our investigation, we send the final draft to NCAA, among other stakeholders, for their review and we give them 60 days to come back to us to tell us why they are not implementable. We don’t just issue safety recommendations for issuing sake.We give the stakeholders opportunity to comment. That is why we call it 60 days window. We are trying to shorten it to 30 days, so that our reports can be out on time. You can imagine you completed reports and you have to give 60 days; that is two months just for stakeholders to read, comment and get back to you. You need to trust AIB.
We need to build a world-class institution so that when we talk, you will listen. This is what we have been doing in the last two- and-half years to make sure that AIB is a credible institution that everybody would listen when we talk. That is very important. It is the same thing all over the world. The US NTSB doesn’t have it in their regulations that if you don’t comply, they will send you to jail. We are making it easy, we work with you. We give you time to assess our recommendations and discuss with us if you think it is not right.
What template do you intend to adopt in handling investigation of road crashes?
On the road, I will give you an example that there is a crash and the vehicle somersaulted, which was caused by a huge ditch or pothole on the road and we issue a safety recommendation to Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to fix the ditch. We will work with FERMA, the same thing we are doing with NCAA. Once that pothole is fixed, this is how you can prevent all these needless deaths. People die every day on our roads. The problem is that nobody investigated anything, nobody checks anything, nobody says this is what we need to do to prevent future occurrence. We’ve heard of tanker fire accidents many times; have you read any recommendation on how to prevent it? These are the things we are going to fix. The people that don’t want to comply, it is either they don’t know or they just don’t want to comply. We found out more that people don’t just know.
Some people think accident investigation is about witch-hunting, but it is not. It is about to help the individual airlines to make sure you reduce these bad images, you are not getting this bad press. If you stop having these reoccurrence, then you reduce the exposure to bad news. It is in the interest of everybody, including the flying public.
