The stowaway simply known as Daniel Oikhena recently hit the touch button for a
media frenzy when he quietly slipped into the landing gear compartment of an Arik
Air aircraft on the runway of the Benin Airport on August 24, 2013. The aircraft was
on its way to Lagos.
It has been a long time that the country has witnessed a stowaway incident, and it
seemed almost inevitable that the media would be unable to resist the feast of
sensation presented by Oikhena. Yet, just as incidents of stealing of cars are always a
risk that car owners have at the back of their minds most of the time, airline
operators and pilots are also conscious that stowaways are always a possibility.
And perhaps, unsurprisingly, another stowaway attempt was made at the same
airport on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 but the culprit was promptly arrested by a
joint patrol of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria’s Aviation Security Services
and the Nigerian Air Force. The trespasser, Mr. Leroy Ugaga, aged about 25, wanted
to gain access to the airside (runway) of the Benin Airport.
Copycat attempts are well-known in such cases.
Predictably, the Oikhena incident has generated a lot of public commentary
accompanied by finger pointing and blame apportioning. Some Nigerians have put
the blame at the door steps of FAAN, being the managers of the airport where the
incident occurred. FAAN, through one or two of its concessionaires, also provides
security services at the airport terminals– although it is well-understood that
security is everyone’s responsibility.
Then, if that is the case, all stakeholders are and should be involved in security.
These include FAAN, private airport terminal operators (for example, MMA 2),
airlines, airport police, Customs, Immigration, Quarantine Section, Cargo freight
operators, pilots, cabin crew and even passengers!
Indeed, according to an account of the Benin incident, Oikhena had been spotted
by some passengers aboard the Arik aircraft who quickly alerted the cabin crew
who, in turn, alerted the pilot. Howbeit, according to that account, the pilot in his
judgment decided to continue with take-off without asking for a check of the
aircraft undercarriage.
In December of 2010, a young Nigerian, Umaru AbdulMutallab Jnr., was a passenger
on a US-bound flight from Ghana. He was duly cleared at the Accra Airport before
boarding the aircraft which was en route Amsterdam to Detriot, US. Despite a
barrage of security checks both at the terminal and at the point of boarding the
aircraft, AbdulMutallab managed to evade all these checks and actually ignited a
plastic bomb hidden in his underwear, which luckily did not engulf the aircraft—as
it was swiftly put off.
AbdulMutallab could have killed over 200 innocent passengers on the North West
Airline flight 253 of Christmas Day, 2009. He was not a stowaway. And he had been
duly checked and passed on to board by security officials in Ghana, and Amsterdam
Airport, considered one of the best and busiest in the world. These airports’ security
systems were not down. They were all in good working order.
Yet, AbdulMutallab was not caught until his ill-fated attempt to detonate the plastic
bomb close to landing in Detroit in the US on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009.
Who was to blame? Airport authorities, flight control officials, Homeland security,
pilot, airline operator, or immigration officials? A few days later, the US Secretary of
Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, acknowledged that the aviation security
system had indeed failed, according to Wikipedia .
Indeed, the Daniel stowaway episode would yet have been averted if the crew of the
Arik Air aircraft had taken seriously the information freely offered by passengers on
board the aircraft and had acted accordingly, by alerting the security agencies at
the airport through the control tower.
It is well-known that our various airport perimeters cover hundreds of square
kilometres of land area which ordinarily, makes it difficult to police effectively. And
given the country’s physical terrain, even at airports where adequate perimeter
fences are in place, these have to be constantly maintained or repaired due to
environmental factors such as heavy rains and erosion which impact the land area.
Therefore, there is a constant need to maintain and monitor these perimeters.
However, what the AbdulMatallab case in the US clearly shows is that no security
system is foolproof the world over.
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