The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved N707. 9 million for the procurement of investigation tools for the Accident Investigation Bureau.
Minister of Aviation, Mr Hadi Sirika, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of Wednesday’s FEC meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said the tool, when procured, would aid investigation whenever an aircraft is involved in an accident in any part of the country.
“The memo was for the deployment of an investigation tool by the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB). That tool permits the AIB to be able to record going-ons in flights; God forbid, should there be a need to investigate an accident, or a serious incident and the tool will help them to do so.
“That procurement is in the sum of N707, 962, 854. 83, an equivalent of 1, 506, 285.70 Euros, inclusive of 7.5 percent value added tax at the Central Bank’s exchange rate of N470 to a Euro, with a delivery period of 11 months,” he said.
The minister said the council also approved the leasing of three aircrafts by the country’s national carrier, Nigeria Air, to enable it commence operations on a date to be announced soon by government.
“We have said in our outline business case, which was earlier approved, that we are starting with three aircrafts for the first instance and then we progress. We will have a mixture of Airbus and Boeings because every airline that will grow big uses the two.
“We will start with domestic flights and then we grow to become international and then we move to become regional and intercontinental. There are challenges currently in our aviation industry but it is a global phenomenon and it will not last forever because aviation is a very resilient sector. Certainly we will overcome these problems,” he said.
