Once more, the nation has been thrown into another moment of despair and sporadic questions with few if any answers at all. And this has been caused by no less an important issue than the security of human lives in the Nigerian airspace.

On Saturday, March 15, 2008, a Beechcraft 1900D aircraft belonging to a private airline, Wings Aviation Limited, flew out of Lagos en route the popular tourist resort of Obudu in Nigeria’s Cross River State. The aircraft, with its three crew members, successfully took off from Lagos and, according to Aviation authority reports, the last known place it made contact with was Enugu. From that point, given the rather sketchy report available to the public, the aircraft was on its own as there are allegations that the airstrip at the ranch is purely a private concern that has no aviation monitoring link with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other air safety bodies in the country.

Hope of an apprehensive nation was raised by Sunday when the Aviation ministry and the NCAA announced that the wreckage of the aircraft had been found. This, like several other reports with regard to the still missing plane, turned out to be false.

Instead of any specific report with regard to the exact location of the plane crash, if there was actually one or whatsoever went wrong, only diverse speculations as to what might have become of the aircraft and its passengers are fed the public daily. Some even attempt the extreme by alluding to a mysterious elemental attack which sounds like an invasion from outer space. Another school thinks the disappearance may be an act of sabotage alluding to an outright sale of the aircraft by whosoever to agents of any of Nigeria’s neighbouring countries.

After four days of misinformation and clueless ‘search’ for the airplane and its occupants, it was a surprise to the Senate of the Federal Republic that neither the Aviation minister nor any of the top officials of the agencies responsible for aviation safety, monitoring and rescue has resigned their positions on account of their failure to locate the missing aircraft and its crew. And it does not appear anyone is making plans to resign for the failings of their office.

Whatever be the speculation over what might have happened to the aircraft and its crew there is an obvious sad exposure of the laxity in the nation’s aviation sector and air safety mechanism. For instance, while the aircraft owner insists that the plane has a functional and serviceable Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) on board, there are doubts over the state of the ELT on the aircraft otherwise it was expected to have signalled the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on impact with hard ground or even water. This would have made locating the site of the accident – if there it was in fact an accident – possible.

Unfortunately, the NCAA, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) or other regulatory agencies still cannot confirm the state of the aircraft’s airworthiness and whether it actually carried an ELT on board or not. Additional search party of helicopters deployed by the Federal Government has equally not yielded any results. This recent incident further confirms existing fears in certain quarters that the aviation sector has not fully attained the level of competence expected of a country the size of Nigeria.

This recent development becomes all the more painful as the nation’s not-too-distant aviation history is filled with avoidable pains too ignominious to talk about. Between 2005 and 2006, two major air mishaps in the country claimed nearly 200 lives and the government vowed that never would Nigerians suffer such disillusionment on account of avoidable air accidents. This recent occurrence is turning out a negation of that position.

While it could be argued that cases of missing aircraft are not peculiar to Nigeria, and that many countries, including advanced economies, have their own share of missing aircraft, quite unlike the case of the Wings Aviation Limited aircraft, in most other countries where aircraft have gone missing, there has been adequate information with regards to exact location and the search and rescue operation usually exhaustive.

In all these, it must be pointed out that modern aviation operation depends almost completely on information and communications technology to function optimally. Between aircraft and control towers and radar systems is a symbiotic relationship that ought to be flawless to guarantee safety in the air. Moreover, effective and uncompromised communication among operators in the industry has become the hallmark of modern day aviation business.

It is painful, therefore, to note that with the country’s communications satellite, Nigcomsat, up and running, a disaster of the nature of the Wings Aviation flight could happen without any sign of the location of the aircraft from the satellite visuals and positioning systems. This incapacity was made worse when the Managing Director/CEO of Nigcomsat, T Ahmed-Rufai informed Nigerians that in future, the nation’s second satellite would be able to track a missing plane.

Today, Nigeria has two satellites in the sky, SAT-1 and Nigcomsat and plans are on to launch a third satellite before the close of the year 2010; it would appear that the country has not made adequate use of these huge investments in satellites. Each time there is an aviation disaster in the country, apart from the usual routine of inviting aircraft manufacturers, it is becoming a source of national disgrace to invite ‘experts’ from other countries to come and conduct search and possibly rescue operations. Are the satellites launched by Nigeria just for the name alone?

For sanity to reign in the country’s aviation business, operators in the industry must fully embrace ICT tools, and where investment has been made in such areas, as in the case of the two satellites already in space, Nigerians demand the most optimal application of such investments. Otherwise the sector will continue to suffer losses and leave many families in pains. Government agencies saddled with monitoring, control and regulating airline operations and safety of passengers must equally show greater commitment and diligence to safety of lives in the air.

Training and regular retraining of aviation personnel should not be compromised for any reason; because that is the only way the authorities can regain the people’s confidence in the sector in the aftermath of this current event and others not too long ago.

Unfortunately, the missing aircraft represents a big dent in the country’s drive to develop the tourism industry as a veritable source of foreign exchange earning. The Obudu Ranch in Cross River State has the potential for another major tourism destination of the world and that is the destination of the missing aircraft.

Recent speculations that an ex-governor currently standing trial at a High Court in the country might have diverted the aircraft to a neighbouring country to prevent the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, from presenting the aircraft as evidence against the ex-governor, if it is true, goes further to expose the short-comings of Nigeria’s aviation monitoring and regulatory agencies. For, if they cannot state for sure, where the aircraft is, then there is little hope that they can assure air travellers of the safety of the country’s airspace, which is in their own care.

For the President Yar’Adua government, this is the time to take a bold and decisive action in order to right the numerous wrongs of the industry and bring Nigeria at par with the rest of the world where air transport is the most cherished means of transportation.

Otherwise, we as a people will be contending with a major national issue capable of robbing the nation of huge revenue and bringing it into global embarrassment. The best way to go is ICT. Anything less will amount to beating about the forest of delusion.