Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has narrated his experience on board a Boeing 777-300, Ethiopian Airline flight which barely escaped crashing on Wednesday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.
The airplane with some 394 passengers aboard, nearly got ill-fated while trying to land.
Obasanjo spoke in an interview with Premium Times on Wednesday night. According to the controversial High Chief of Owu Kingdom: “While it all happened, I was reading my papers.
“One man, who was next to me, said, ‘Oga you no worry?’ I said, ‘Íf I worry, what should I do? If you are on a plane and you have a situation like this, why should you worry?’ So, I left everything in the hands of God.”
The former Nigerian leader was said to be returning from a stakeholders’ meeting on Continental Trade and Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) which had ended on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
The plane, with 394 persons on board, had a forced landing occasioned by strong winds and heavy rain while the plane almost overran its runway before returning to the air and later landed safely at the airport after spending about 10 minutes in the air
“I was on the Ethiopian Airline. Rain just came down heavily,” OBJ recalled.
“The pilot thought he could land. And he landed. He touched down. But I think he took a swift decision that he had to take off again.
“So he took off. If he did not, I think he probably would have overrun the runway. He then apologised and said he would try to land again. He tried again, and we landed safely. And we all clapped.”
The ex-military head of state said the pilot first landed the plane at about 12:20 p.m. before the incident, but finally landed safely on return at 12:30 p.m.
“He touched the ground. Then he took off and apologised and landed again at about 12.30. We spent just about 10 minutes in the air before we landed again,” he said.
Recall that the Ethiopian Airline has, of recent, suffered a crash of its flight ET302 flying its B-737 MAX 800 aircraft in March that killed all 157 persons on-board.
The aircraft en-route Nairobi from Addis Ababa, crashed six minutes after takeoff around Bishoftu, 40 miles South-east of the Ethiopian capital.
