Grounded Rivers Aircraft: Reps Clear Amaechi And Indict NCAA, NAMA…Say Aircraft Belongs to Rivers State

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.

Culled -  Saharareporters

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