THE teenage stowaway, Daniel Ihekina,
who was arrested at the Lagos Airport after flying in the tyre hole of
an Arik plane from Benin to Lagos on Saturday morning, thought he was on
a US-bound flight.
A source at the Benin Airport who
disclosed this said the boy’s parents had already departed for Lagos in
search of the stowaway.
The airport source, who did not want his
name in print said, “From what we heard, the boy said he was being
maltreated and tried to escape from his parents. He thought he was on
his way to the US.
“The parents have travelled to Lagos by road, to get him back.”
Meanwhile, investigations conducted by
one of our correspondents in Lagos revealed that the boy had been handed
over to the operatives of the State Security Services for further
investigation.
The General Manager, Corporate
Communications, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. Yakubu Dati,
who also confirmed the development, said the aviation security personnel
of the agency had handed over the young voyager to the men of the SSS
for extensive investigation.
Dati said, “The residential address the
boy gave to us was traced to a church in Benin by our airport manager
and his team. So, there is need to hand over the teenager to the SSS who
are experts in such investigations. They will carry out further
investigation on the matter.”
The FAAN spokesman said the nature and
circumstances surrounding the crime informed the agency decision to hand
over the stowaway to the SSS operatives.
Meanwhile, following the Benin Airport
incident, FAAN has adopted the ‘risk amelioration processes to safeguard
flight operations’ at all its 22 airports across the country.
Dati stressed that the agency had tightened its risk amelioration procedure to ensure that similar incident did not occur again.
He also said the agency had prioritised the perimeter fencing of all the 22 airports in the country.
“In the meantime, we have adopted risk
amelioration processes to safeguard flight operations. As a result of
this incident in Benin, we have further tightened our risk amelioration
procedure to ensure that a similar incident does not occur,” he said.
However, FAAN has also continued to trade blame with Arik Air over the Benin incident.
The agency, in a statement on Sunday,
said it read with “great dismay the statement released by Arik Airlines
about the stowaway found on board Arik’s flight 544 from Benin to Lagos
on Saturday 24 August, 2013.”
Dati said FAAN was “unfairly indicted” while the airline took no responsibility whatsoever for such a “serious security breach.”
FAAN said its preliminary investigation had revealed that Arik did not give accurate account of the Benin Airport incident.
Giving the accounts of its preliminary
findings, FAAN said, “Our investigations reveal that a passenger on
board the flight called the attention of the cabin crew while the
aircraft was waiting to take off at the threshold of the runway, to the
effect that they had seen a young boy walk under the aircraft and had
not seen him re-appear on the other side.”
“The cabin crew in turn informed the
pilots in the cockpit about this. The pilots called the control tower
and asked them to request FAAN to do a sweep of the area after their
departure, opting to carry on with their flight despite the report.”
“Upon the arrival of the aircraft in
Lagos, we were informed that there had been a stowaway found alive
alighting from the wheel well of the aircraft. While FAAN takes this
security breach extremely seriously, we deem Arik’s attempt at indicting
and smearing FAAN as irresponsible. Safety and security breaches occur
when all the checks in the system are beaten. Given that security is a
responsibility for all players in this industry, a critical last
opportunity to detect and prevent this stowaway was offered and had the
airline taken the information by passengers as seriously as they should
have, this incident would have been avoided.”{PUNCH}
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