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Nigeria Decries State of Airport After Deadly Air Crash

Posted on: Saturday, 31 December 2005, 09:00 CST

Nigeria decries state of airport after deadly air crash

LAGOS, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's presidential task force on the aviation industry, which was established after the Sosoliso Airlines air crash this month that killed 106 people, most of them students, has decried the state of facilities at the Port Harcourt international airport in the south of the country.

"It is very sad that the Port Harcourt airport lacks a functional radar and cannot boast of a serviceable ambulance for search and rescue," the official News Agency of Nigeria quoted its chairman Paul Dike as saying on Friday.

"Other equipment and facilities here are not satisfactory," he said. The airport in Port Harcourt, the heart of Africa's top crude producer's oil industry, is one of the busiest in Nigeria after the airports in the capital Abuja and the largest city Lagos.

Dike, who led members of the task force on an inspection of the airport earlier this week, expressed dismay with the state of the facilities, describing them as "unfortunate for an airport that is of international status."

"In fact, the infrastructure and facilities at the Port Harcourt airport have fallen far below standard," he added.

In the past two months, three planes crashed in Nigeria, leaving more than 200 people killed. The latest happened on December 10 when a DC-9 operated by Sosoliso crashed on a final touch down to the runway in Port Harcourt, killing 106 on board, most of them children returning home for the holidays.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo called an emergency meeting on air safety this month following the air crash, pledging to do everything to ensure that aviation industry is sanitized. He had ordered the inspection of the airlines in the country.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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