A committee of the House of Representatives has
determined that Rivers State Governor, Chibuike
Rotimi Amaechi, did not break any laws in the
incidents that led to the grounding of a state-
owned Bombardier Aircraft by the Nigerian Civil
Aviation Authority (NCAA).
The legislators stated that Rivers State remained
the real owner of the B700 Global Express Aircraft
with Registration Number N565RS with a valid
insurance cover that will expire in 2015.
The representatives also found there was no truth
to the claim by Nigeria’s aviation agencies that
the aircraft belongs to a foreign country and has
no valid papers.
These were some of the conclusions contained in
a report by the House committee on Justice and
Aviation. The committee investigated the
circumstances that led to the controversial
grounding of the aircraft.
The 11-page report was jointly signed by the
House Committee Chairman on Justice, Ali
Ahmad, and his Aviation counterpart, Nkeiruka
Onyejeocha. The House had composed the
committee on April 30, 2013 to probe the
grounding of the aircraft by the NCAA.
The committee sat on May 14, 2013 and took
testimonies from officials of the NCAA, the Nigeria
Aviation Management Authority (NAMA), Aviation
Minister, Stella Oduah, as well as officials of
Caverton Helicopters and the Rivers State
Government.
The report stated, “The level of ineptitude of
NCAA is glaring in many respects: failure to
appreciate from a trust agreement that an aircraft
belongs to a trustor-beneficiary even after their
attention is drawn to it and even as other aircraft
are registered in the name of the same trustee;
non-detection of an expired flight clearance 24
days after the fact and the detection was
triggered by an incident rather than as a matter of
course; even if the fact of falsification of
documents were true.”
The report added: “It was unacceptable that NCAA
did not detect this fact for over six months;
indeed NCAA boasted in a letter of 29th April,
2013 that following the incident it undertook a
due diligence of the status of the aircraft, but
even then it failed to determine the issue of
ownership and several others.
“Operational and other navigational charges were
received by NAMA and FAAN and other agencies
while operating the aircraft and receipts issued
without raising alarm as to ownership of the
aircraft by Rivers State Government.
Part of the report also stated: “Perusal of the Trust
Agreement between Rivers State Trustor and
Bank of Utah Trustee would have shown this fact
of ownership; it is distressing that NCAA and the
Ministry still fail or refuse to appreciate this
simple fact; but since the authorities did not raise
ownership issue with several other aircraft having
the name of Bank of Utah Trustees, this allegation
is in bad faith and grossly unprofessional, as the
owner, Rivers State Government elected to
register the aircraft in the U.S. to save money for
the State and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.
“Rivers State Government, through Caverton,
applied to the Hon. Minister of Aviation to import
and operate the aircraft in Nigeria but the
application was not consummated, and so it is
being operated in Nigeria as a foreign aircraft for
private use. For more visit:
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