The uptick in military air accidents in the country is becoming highly troubling. It is a development that should particularly bother military aviation safety experts and stakeholders.
The latest tragedy occurred last Monday when a Nigerian Air Force ATR-42 aircraft, registration number NAF 931, crashed into the mangrove swamp of Igbokoda in Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State. It killed all the 25 persons — five crew members and 20 other Airforce personnel — on board.
The aircraft was on a routine mission from Benin City, Edo State, to Lagos when air traffic controllers lost contact with it at about 9:13am. The Nigerian Air Force subsequently confirmed the casualty figure.
It is a tragedy of horrendous proportions that has thrown the nation into a mood of melancholy and dysphoria. President Bola Tinubu, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, immediately declared a three-day mourning period, during which all national flags flew at half mast.
The recurrent military air crashes are becoming embarrassing. The latest is one crash too many, being about the 10th in just five years. Specifically, according to records, there were at least 10 military aircraft crashes between 2021 and 2026, killing at least 68 persons.
The year 2021 was the most challenging period for the Nigeria Air Force (NAF) when four crashes were recorded within the intervals of months of the same year.
First, a NAF Beechcraft King Air 350i crashed on February 21, 2021 shortly after taking off from Abuja. All the seven military personnel on board were killed on the Minna, Niger State-bound military flight.
Second, on March 31 of the same year, an Alpha Jet conducting operations in Borno State disappeared from radar. Its wreckage was later found in the Sambisa Forest, while its two pilots were presumed dead because they were never accounted for.
Third, two months later, on May 21, a NAF King Air 350 crashed near Kaduna International Airport. All the persons on board, including the then Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, died.
Fourth, in July 2021, another NAF Alpha Jet was lost after it was shot down in Zamfara State. Its pilot, Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, however, survived after ejecting from the aircraft.
In 2022, a NAF Super Mushshak trainer aircraft crashed in Kaduna, killing its two pilots. In 2023, a NAF FT-7NI trainer aircraft crashed in Makurdi, Benue State, although both pilots survived.
A month later, a NAF Mi-171 helicopter said to be conducting a casualty evacuation mission crashed at Chukuba village in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, killing 11 people.
A NAF Mi-35P helicopter crashed in December 2023 shortly after take-off from the NAF Base in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The five crew members, however, survived.
Some of the subsequent crashes before the latest one, which was the second this year alone, were, however, non- fatal. In 2025, an Alpha Jet suffered an in-flight emergency during a post-inspection functional check flight near Kainji in Niger State. Both pilots ejected safely.
Also, in January 2026, a NAF CH-4B unmanned aircraft was lost during a surveillance operation in Niger State, but there were no human casualties.
Many of these incidents occurred in circumstances such as combat operations, training, routine missions, casualty evacuation and post-maintenance checks.
These crashes are an appalling aberration in aviation safety records because air travel is ideally supposed to be the relatively safest of the three major modes of transportation — road, water and air. Air accidents should be a rarity because the fatalities whenever they occur are often seismic— there are hardly survivors.
That is why everywhere in the world, investments in safety and maintenance in that sector are non-negotiable and are accorded the topmost priority.
The pattern of military air crashes in our own case has consequently raised questions about aircraft maintenance, airworthiness, operational safety and the conditions under which military aircraft are deployed.
Meanwhile, the case of one of the victims of the Igbokoda tragedy is, in humanitarian terms, deeply heart-rending and emotionally upsetting. For Flight Lieutenant Damilola Adekunle, who lost her husband to the crash two weeks after their colourful wedding, it was like a generational fiasco. The same wall of catastrophe had fallen on her father 20 years ago.
It was such an inscrutable quirk of fate. On September 17, 2006, a Nigerian Air Force Dornier 228-212 aircraft conveying senior military officers from Abuja to Obudu for a military retreat had crashed in the Vandeikya area of Benue State.
The accident killed 13 persons, including eight Major-Generals, two Brigadier-Generals, a Lieutenant-Colonel and two Wing Commanders, one of whom was Damilola’s father, Wing Commander E. O. Adekunle, identified as one of the aircraft’s pilots.
However, unfazed by her father’s tragic fate, Damilola, quite stoically, toed her father’s professional path, went ahead to enlist in the Airforce and also became a pilot. She consequently met and married a co- Airforce pilot.
Barely two weeks after their wedding, Damilola’s husband, Squadron Leader Ahamefule “Aham” Man-Ugwueje, was among the NAF officers killed in the October 5 Air Force ATR-42 aircraft Igbokoda crash, the same fate that befell her father two decades earlier!
For the couple, who literally melted into one soul on September 19 when they were joined together in holy matrimony at the Redeemed Christian Church of God, The Masters Place, in Utako, Abuja, and were in that conjugal union for just 16 days, as well as their grief-stricken families, military service is more than a profession; it is a tradition. Ahamefule’s own father himself is an Airforce officer, though now retired.
Their pathetic fate exemplifies the dark side of the military, especially the air component, a very gnarly, highly exacting and prepatic profession. Of course, the ‘Nigeria factor’ also happened to the couple because the military aviation in the country is becoming rather more precipitous.
The latest crash has particularly revved up concerns over the safety of the military aviation fleet, in view of the frequency of aircraft losses involving the NAF in recent years. Nowhere else in the world is this frequency of military air accidents being recorded.
It is a disconcerting development over which the Federal Government, the Armed Forces, aviation safety experts and aviation stakeholders generally ought to urgently coalesce and brainstorm.
It is noteworthy that the Nigeria Air Force (NAF) has instituted an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Igbokoda crash. The Force commendably usually promptly does that each time there is a crash or an airstrike mishap.
However, the use to which reports of those internal investigations have been put remains to be seen in view of the recurrence of air accidents and airstrike infractions, sometimes recording heavy casualties.
The continued blundering neglect of or insouciance to the issue of safety and maintenance that hallmarks our national life generally is augury for bigger future disasters. Delay is costly.
Aviation stakeholders should immediately convey a round table parley and carry out a comprehensive review of military aviation safety systems, including aircraft maintenance, airworthiness standards, operational procedures, safety oversight and accident investigation.
The review should also include the mode of aircraft purchases and length of use. A report said the aircraft that crashed in Igbokoda was one of two ATR-42s that were acquired from Italian aerospace manufacturer, Alenia Aeronautica, under a contract signed in March 2007.
The $73 million agreement reportedly covered the supply of two aircraft as well as crew training and logistical support. NAF 930, the first of the two aircraft, was was said to have been delivered to Nigeria in December 2009. NAF 931 followed about four months later, arriving in March 2010. The two aircraft have reportedly been in service on the NAF fleet for at least 16 years.
A thorough audit of the military aviation fleet and the prompt implementation of the recommendations of the experts is all the more imperative because the nation relies heavily on air assets in the concerted war against terrorism and banditry. The fleet must always be in top form.
We must deliberately and systematically reduce the frequent military air crashes and stop dissipating our human assets as well as colossal military aviation infrastructure to avoidable air accidents, even as the terror war remains convoluted.
Apart from the prodigious drain to the national purse, the men and officers being lost to these accidents were all trained at great costs. Besides, they were husbands, fathers, mothers, wives, children, brothers and sisters to some people who may never recover from the losses of loved ones.
One way of containing these tragic losses should be to periodically retire, phase out or withdraw from service and replace aircraft on the military aviation fleet after a particular length of use, depending on the make and capability.
We should also reduce our proclivity for being a willing ‘dumping ground’ for disused military aircraft from other countries. This is part of the blight. Let us build a fleet that could stand the test of airworthiness at all times. The Federal Government should not spare any cost to achieve this. Enough of needless military air accidents!.
