FAAN and the stowaway Daniel

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.
- Yakubu Dati is the Coordinating General
Manager Corporate Communications for
the aviation parastatals.