Plane Crash: Eye Witness Recount Ordeal

An airport taxi driver, Mathew Babatunde who witnessed the crash narrated how it happened.

He said, "I was just passing the toll gate with passengers in my car when I saw the aircraft coming down.

I even thought the plane will crash on my car the way it was bent.

My passengers immediately shouted at me that I should swerve the car. Immediately, I swerved my car then I saw that the plane was struggling to go back up. It eventually hit a Mango tree behind Saraha Tank Farm. 

Immediately the plane hit the tree, it divided into two and caught fire. I saw one man walked out with his leg, he was supported by two other people (The man was later revealed as Mr. Akinsanya, son- in-law of the late former Governor Olusegun Agagu). It took about 20 minutes before ambulance came and another forty minutes before fire service people arrived the scene.

"Those around, including Air Force, Arik and other Nigerians were helping to rescue the victims. "I am not working again today, I want to go and park my car now. I am no longer interested."

Another witness, Mrs. Chidinma Nwoke spoke while crying, saying she was among the first people who arrived the scene of the crash. She said "we tried to help the victims but the soldiers and airport officials refused. They said it is dangerous and that we were not wearing safety boots. "It is horrible. I saw a woman who tried to jump out but she got hooked on the fence and she died there. The fire outbreak consumed most of them, including one man who was almost out. That man would have been alive if the fire services were on

ground early enough. He was almost out of the aircraft but fire caught his trousers and that was how he got burnt". "I saw a man who wore a white trouser walked with his legs from the crash. He had only a slight injury on the head and was taken to the clinic near the toll gate".

Another person who witnessed it, Mr. Nasir Ramon Olanrewaju, a senior communications manager working at the headquarters of United Bank for Africa (UBA), simply said, "I was at a private hangar waiting for a flight to Ghana when I saw the plane, an Embraer come down at the airport. I saw it plunged into a building, close to Tank Farm at the airport, close to toll gate".