Former director-general of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms Joe Abah and the co-founder and CEO of civic startup budgIT Seun Onigbinde on Thursday disembarked from an Ibom Air aircraft due to faulty landing gear.
Abah revealed this in a post on X, stating that the flight boarded from Lagos was set to take off to Abuja when an engineer informed an attendant on the flight about the fault.
“I boarded a 7am @ibomairlines flight in Lagos this morning, heading to Abuja. My brother @seunonigbinde was on the same flight and we had chatted briefly about work. Aircraft door was shut, phones switched off, ready for takeoff,” he wrote.
“As we were about to start taxiing, there was a loud knock on the aircraft door from outside. We all wondered what it could be. The knocking got more persistent. The flight attendant had to open the door again.
“As she did, a ground engineer came in and those of us in front clearly heard him say ‘You can’t go. Your landing gear is bad.'”
Abah said the pilot made a ‘political’ announcement that they needed to perform some additional checks before take off and apologised for the delay.
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He added that the pilot spoke with the engineer and, a few seconds later, announced that they were to disembark.
“I thank God that we have the systems in place to check this and avert potential disaster. And that we have some diligent Nigerians who take their work seriously,” he said.
Abah urged the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to help him find the engineer so he could thank him personally.
Onigbinde wrote in the comment section, “To God be the glory. We need more bold people who own their space and act diligently.”
“I remain thankful for his diligence,” he added.
This comes hours after minister of aviation and aerospace development Festus Keyamo directed the NCAA to suspend the operations of Dana Air after one aircraft in the fleet skidded off the runway at the Lagos airport on Tuesday with 83 passengers onboard.
