Associated Airline Crash: Relatives Claim Bodies Of Burnt Victims As Funeral Holds For Son Of MIC Boss

The families of those who died in the fatal crash of an Associated Airline jet on October 3, 2013 have begun to claim the charred bodies of victims. The claiming of the bodies of the badly burnt bodies of the crash victims commenced after results came back from DNA tests conducted abroad to establish the identity of the dead passengers.

“We used DNA samples of the relatives of the casualties to do tests abroad,” the results came back, matching the bodies to the DNA of relatives." The families of the victims have now begun retrieving corpses from the morgue at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).”

The source disclosed that the body of Olatunji Okusanya, Jr., son of the MIC Funerals boss, ’Tunji Okusanya, had been taken away from the morgue. MIC Funerals had been hired to organize the burial of former Governor Olusegun Agagu of Ondo State.

Mr. Okusanya and his son as well as several staff of the funeral firm were among the victims of the crash that involved an old Embraer aircraft that belonged to Associated Airline. The chattered aircraft was conveying the remains of Mr. Agagu from the local wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos to Akure, the Ondo State capital. The jet crashed shortly after take-off, killing or severely injuring its passengers.

A family source also made it known that a service of songs would hold today in memory of the son of the late MIC Funerals boss. His wake is scheduled for Wednesday, November 13, 2013.

However, the family of the deceased MIC boss had yet to claim his body as of November 12, even though he was among the ones already identified by DNA tests. A family source confirmed the development, explaining that Mr. Okusanya’s family would organize a separate funeral for the late MIC boss after concluding the burial of his son.

Sources said the DNA analyses were not done in Nigeria as the facility to do them was not available anywhere in the country.

Questions have always dogged the airworthiness and maintenance of much of the aircraft in operation in Nigeria, with some stakeholders in the aviation sector charging that corrupt officials of regulatory agencies in the sector offer operational licenses to unworthy planes in exchange for bribes. In addition, some members of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) have accused Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, and her minions in the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) of pursuing personal luxury at the expense of the safety of air passengers who use commercial airlines. 

Ms. Oduah is currently embroiled in a scandal for authorizing the purchase of two armored BMW cars at a cost of N255 million, the equivalent of $1.6 million. To compound the scandal, there are grounds to suspect that the cars were never even delivered, despite the fact that vendors, Coscharis Motors, collected the full payment from money borrowed from First Bank of Nigeria.

The management of Coscharis has yet to surface with evidence that the company paid the German automaker for the purchase of the cars. Even so, Ms. Oduah, who is at the center of the scandal, has continued to enjoy the apparent protection of President Goodluck Jonathan..