THE Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has trained 200 security personnel on management of crash sites in order to protect evidence critical to accident investigation.

The two-day training ended on Wednesday in Lagos and had security officers drawn from the Nigeria Police Force (NPF)  and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).

Mr Olumide Osineye, the General Manager, Security and Safety, AIB, told newsmen that “Air Disaster Management” is an important part of accident investigation.

Osineye said another batch of 200 security personnel would be trained in Abuja by top officials of the bureau and its partners from the United Kingdom next week.

He said security personnel were, in most cases, first responders to crash sites and must thus be given adequate training on how to manage the situation.

According to him, the training will enable the security agencies’ personnel to know and understand their roles in case of an accident.

Osineye said that they would also be able to identify and appreciate the need for protection and preservation of evidence vital to aircraft accident investigation.

He said : “You can imagine a police officer who is not aware of critical evidence like flight recorder.

” A police officer on site who has never seen flight recorder before and may be a flight recorder is being taken away ignorantly by unknown persons and he doesn’t even know that this is very critical to investigation.

“In order to help and support AIB investigation, we owe it a duty to ensure that such category of trained personnel or organisations are aware of such critical components.”

Osineye said this was not the first time AIB would be organising such a workshop for security personnel, recalling that the bureau recently organised training for some police officers in the country.

“Now, we are going beyond that to include the road safety officials because we know the FRSC too plays a role when accident occurs.

“These are field people. The education is important for us to do our job better. These people will have been on site before we get there.

“So, it is important for us to make them aware of this. We need to appreciate them in helping us to do our investigation,” he said.

The general manager also lauded Mr Akin Olateru, the Commissioner of AIB, for ensuring that security personnel in the country were trained on air accident disaster management.

Osineye said the feedback received from the previous training programmes were encouraging, stressing that this would also add to the knowledge of the personnel. (NAN)

– Apr. 10, 2019 @ 15:12 GMT |