The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in partnership with the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has inaugurated a committee on collaboration, cooperation and coordination in order to ensure that public safety in the aviation industry in Nigeria is enhanced.
This was made known by the Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Capt. Musa Nuhu during a press briefing on Wednesday in Abuja.
Capt. Nuhu said that the collaboration between the two sister agencies would help them to achieve more their respective functions.
“The inauguration of this committee on collaboration, cooperation, and coordination between our two sister aviation agencies, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB).
“Today marks a great stride towards performing our respective functions in the areas of safety oversight and investigation of accidents and serious incidents with a view to determining probable causes, implement safety recommendations issued thereto in order to prevent recurrence.
“It is very important to state that the primary aim objective of the establishing this committee is to ensure that through these coordination, collaboration and cooperation processes, that public safety in the aviation industry is enhanced,” be stated.
He stressed that such control had been taking place between the agencies, the Authority and the Bureau, but it was inconsistently and informally.
“However, with the inauguration of this committee, it is expected that safety and accident investigation experts will have the opportunity to sit down together to review safety recommendations that have been proposed by the Bureau and the responses provided by the Authority, their implementation where necessary and the review of effectiveness of these measures with time.
“It is also important that I state that these are the two vested with the responsibility for the implementation of the State Safety Programme (SSP) and in support for this implementation, of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulations (Nigel. CARs) Part 20 on safety management requires that both authorities have access to appropriate information in the incident reporting system (Mandatory Occurrence Reporting (MOR) and the Non-Punitive Reporting System) to support the safety responsibilities.
“In pursuant to the above, both authorities are striving towards establishing compatible software to enable the sharing of safety data and this also Part of the mandate of the committee,” he said.
The NCAA Director General said that another area of cooperation between the two agencies is on the clarity on what constitutes a serious incident in terms interpretation and application.
He therefore urged the committee to continuously and productively engage in ensuring the establishment of conclusion devoid of ambiguous and bogus interpretations that will ensure frictionless and seamless description of lines of responsibilities.
Capt. Nuhu further mentioned that the committee would address the issue of the establishment of procedures for timely transfer of occurrences either way to ensure that valid and valuable evidences are not degraded or even completely lost before the transferee authority commences investigation.
He implored the committee to to justify the trust reposed on them by focusing on safety of aircrafts and the continuous trust and confidence of the Nigerian people in the aviation ecosystem.
