Eye Witnesses Give Account Of Agagu Plane Crash

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

“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. It took about 20 minutes before ambulance came and another forty minutes before fire service people arrived the scene. 

“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 who spoke while crying, said she was among the first people who got 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”.