Ime Akpan
The Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has embarked on training no fewer than 400 men of the Nigeria Police Force and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) on how to handle evidence that would help in air accident investigation.
While 200 FRSC and police officials were trained at a two-day workshop held in Lagos April 8-9, another batch of 200 is expected to be trained in Abuja next week by AIB officials and their partners from the United Kingdom.
The two-day workshop in Lagos which had as its theme ‘Air disaster management’ focused on protection of investigation evidences by first responders who in most cases are the personnel of security agencies.
Speaking in an interview, AIB’s general manager in charge of security and safety, Mr. Olumide Osineye, said the training of the security personnel would create awareness across the country on the importance of securing crash sites.
Oshineye, who was one of the instructors, said the training would enable the security personnel know and understand their roles in the event of an accident.
“You can imagine a police officer who is not aware of critical evidence like flight recorder. A police officer on site who has never seen a flight recorder before and may be a flight recorder is being taken away ignorantly by unknown persons. This is very critical to investigation.
“In order to help and support AIB investigation, we hold it a duty to ensure that such category of trained personnel or organisations are aware of such critical component. These people are necessary for their education and awareness of their job,” he said.
However, Osineye said it was not the first time AIB would be organising such a workshop for security personnel.
He recalled the bureau recently organised training for some police officers in the country.
“Now, we are going beyond that to include the road safety officials because we know the FRSC too plays a role when accident occurs. These are field people. Their education is important for us to do our job better. These people will have been on site before we get there. So, it is important for us to make them aware of this. We need to appreciate them in helping us to do our investigation,” he said.
He said the agency had been getting positive feedback from the previous training.
Apart from Lagos and Abuja, he emphasised that the training would extend to other airports and stations across the country.
“The impact of AIB is great. First and foremost, all stakeholders are working towards the same goal. We are making a big leap to ensure that our safety investigation findings go a long way.
“What we do is that we ensure that the kind of accident we investigated for instance, does not recur again. However, the aim of AIB safety recommendations or investigations is not to apportion blame or obtain liability, but specifically for safety,” said Oshineye.
