The Director-General of the Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), Capt. Alex Badeh Jr. in this interview says the bureau responsible for investigation of accidents and incidents in all modes of transportation has concluded work on manuals for other modes of transportation after transmitting to a multimodal investigation agency from just being an air accident investigator. He speaks on other issues bordering on safety of all modes of transportation. Excerpt!
16 months in the saddle as the Director General of the NSIB, even though you have been an aviator, accident investigation might be an entirely different terrai. How have you been able to navigate the terrain?
Initially it was a bit challenging but I have been able to lean on the expertise of staff, the bureau's employees have been my biggest source of strength. I have leveraged their expertise, the investigators, and the directors.
It was initially challenging but it got easier as the year progressed. I can say now that I have fully settled down, as you see now we have a rash of accidents and incidents and we are liaising with the NCAA and our investigators to do the job. And right now we are looking forward to zero accidents this year.
What were some of the challenges you encountered?
It was a new job as you said. I was used to being in the flight deck with a crew of two or seven, now dealing with 330 employees with different backgrounds, different wants and needs. So there was that challenge. Of course funding was and still is a challenge in NSIB but we have been able to cajole here and there, we just need a little bit more funding to make us a little bit more stable. Of course stability is not just what you want, you want to stay in a comfortable state over the next year, you know we are multimodal now. The same way we have done in aviation, we want to contribute our capacity and expertise in maritime, road, rail and other modes of transportation Nigeria. So that is our focus this year.
In terms of discharging your mandate, when you came on board, how many accidents did you meet on ground and how many of those reports have you completed?
I don't have the total number on my head but I know we did 16 reports last year which is a huge number considering that they have been there for more than four years, some three years and I inherited half of those myself. We had 16 reports on air accidents, we did one maritime which was the Anambra boat incident. We are working on an investigative procedure manual for the maritime sector which will be ready by the end of May latest so that we can hold stakeholders' engagement.
We are done with the Rail manual and I am sure this year we would be done with those two and we would be a full-fledged investigative agency for rail and maritime.
From the recent incidents we had, you see majorly tyre bursts and aircraft overshooting the runway, why do we have this pattern?
We haven't had final reports with burst tyre but we have had preliminary reports and I do not want to speculate until we have the final reports for the Dana, Xejet and Allied Air incidents. For all of those, it wasn't really a tyre burst. If you have read the report about Allied Air, it seems like a systemic issue in the operation but the investigation is still ongoing.
For Dana, I know they had a gear issue before it touched down. For the Xejet, so far there was no issue with the airplane. But when the final reports come out, you would have a definite answer on the issues. Each of these incidents touched on different issues and not essentially tyre bursts.
An average member of the Nigerian flying public tends to get agitated with some of these issues. Are there really causes for concern in terms of safety of our operation?
There should always be concern. Safety concerns everybody, it concerns all of us as aviators, we should always be vigilant. I will say safety is everybody's concern but I will not say we should be overly concerned with the state of the aviation industry in Nigeria. We know in the past four months, there has been a rash of crashes around the world. It is just one of those years, accidents do happen. By and large this year we have had it pretty safe, there has not been any loss of life or any air accident. So, I will say we are pretty safe, you saw what happened with the Max Air, they stood them down to have their audit and since the regulator has said they passed the audit, they have continued to fly. We should be able to trust the regulator to do the job and do the job thoroughly. So I would say, based on the trend in the past six months in Nigeria and the NCAA's oversight, I can say we are pretty safe.
Looking at some of the investigation reports you have released in recent times, in terms of implementing some of the recommendations by other agencies, how far have we gone?
I would like to give FAAN special recognition, especially the MD, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku. Since she came on board, we have had a very good relationship. With the others, I know NAMA (the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency) has been having funding issues with their radios, I can't say whether they are improving or not in their primary radios and radar. So we still have that gap. For the NCAA, I know they are short of manpower and so getting them to get there is pretty hard but we have the state safety programme and we liaise with them. We have the West Africa Civil Aviation (WACA) Forum which is used for training on state safety programmes. I give the NCAA high mark on that. I expect to see more of these safety recommendations closed in the coming months of this year. We have a Central Delivery Coordinating Unit with the Presidency headed by Hadiza Bala Usman who is pushing hard on these safety recommendations to make sure they are closed. If I say they are all closed, I would be lying because it is a challenge getting them closed but I have seen more improvement and more willingness of all the agencies involved to close these safety recommendations.
Now talking about other modes of transportation like the Maritime, you just spoke about coming up with procedures and manuals. What is the level of collaboration with these agencies?
I will give the Nigeria Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) special commendation. They seem to have picked up with the pace. Our relationship is more cordial. You know the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy set up a task force to get to the roots of all these boat mishaps and waterway accidents. They co-opted our maritime experts at NSIB and all the other people concerned. For others, we wait and see. Once we have our regulations out, we would bring them in, in a stakeholders' forum to get their buy-in.
For now since they don't have our regulations, I will be able to answer your question very well by the time they have our regulations and see the work we are doing.
Again with the maritime sector, at the level of the IMO (the International Maritime Organisation), NSIB is the only recognised maritime accident investigation agency in Nigeria. It used to be NIMASA. As part of their Act, they have an investigative part as a unit but it is not their responsibility. Because IMO did not know about NSIB, they left the investigation part with NIMASA but they are now aware of the NSIB and they are aware of our manual. In fact we actually developed our manual in collaboration with IMO experts. Once we get the manual out this year, I think there would be no question again as to who are accident investigators for Maritime in Nigeria.
So you now interface with the IMO?
Yes we are as an agency of government and with our manual. IMO experts are deeply involved with our manual.
What about the manpower resources, especially for the maritime sector?
Yes, definitely we are building that. Before the end of the year we would have some maritime experts coming on board.
In terms of collaboration, the act establishing NSIB said some of the maritime agencies should pay a certain amount of money to you from their IGR
Unfortunately when it comes to money we don't cooperate. I see NIMASA as a groom with many brides and they are playing favourites with some of their brides and leaving some of the other ones to decide. It is something we have to look into at some point and hopefully we would get the presidency involved if need be because it is what the law stipulates no matter the argument about it not being in their act. The National Assembly passed our own law and it is being signed by the presidency.
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Yes, that's where the challenge is, NIMASA has its own Act which guides its activities and does not make provision for the contribution to NSIB. Do we have to tinker with the NIMASA Act to implement this part of your Act which stipulates that a certain amount of money be paid to the NSIB?
Well I am not a lawyer, neither am I a politician. So I don't know anything about tinkering with other people's acts. I met something on ground and we are trying to work with what is on ground without making drastic changes and I believe our Act is workable. We just need more cooperation between the NSIB and NIMASA. It can be done with willingness on both sides to come to the table. I believe ministry to ministry, we are working on that, my minister is working on that. We are all about the safety of Nigerians, this is not a tough war and if each agency is doing a great job, we would not have this state of accidents in our maritime industry as it stands now. Compared to the aviation sector, the aviation sector is pretty safe when you look at the data and numbers. We are doing a good job which is why I presume it was decided to make the NSIB the apex accident investigation agency in Nigeria.
What about the railway sector? I know the NSIB took over the investigation of some railway accidents; how far about that?
My focus is to get the manuals done. Like the maritime manual is being done. These are the building blocks you need to get. A house built on a faulty foundation would crumble. So for me it is building that solid foundation. Once our manuals are ready this year, we would be releasing reports in those areas.
We met with the last leadership of NRC, we have not met with the new one. We have an MoU with the railway and we need to revisit that and activate the MoU. Also, we have the regulations for the railway already, we just need to get the policies and procedures and we would tie those together and we would invite the NRC as a major stakeholder. So, by the end of this year, we would be a full-fledged accident investigation agency to investigate maritime, rail, road and air.
