The Cross River State government has said that it has given up hope of finding the Beechcraft 1900D owned by Wings Aviation, which was declared missing with three crew members on March 15.
But the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has said it has adopted another strategy in its bid to find the aircraft: trekking.
The 19-passenger aircraft which left Lagos at 7.30 am that Saturday for Bebi Airstrip at Obudu Cattle Ranch, Cross River State, did not reach its destination at the expected 8.22 am as scheduled and was declared missing 15 minutes later.
The state government yesterday notified the Federal Government, insisting that the aircraft was not anywhere within the geographical jurisdiction of the state because it had deployed its machinery and searched all the nooks and crannies of the state without finding the aircraft or anything that could give a clue to its whereabouts.
A source told THISDAY that the state government implored the Federal Government to beam its searchlight on neighbouring countries, especially Cameroon.
Since the aircraft was declared missing, efforts had been made to find it by NEMA which started to search for it in the Obudu area with helicopters and later extended the search to the whole of the state.
All the efforts of the agency yielded no result.
The Federal Government had announced that the aircraft was found a day after it was declared missing only to say less than 24 hours later that the aircraft was not found and since then many government agencies and parastatals in the aviation sector have sealed their lips about efforts being made to find the aircraft.
But at the weekend, NEMA said that it would on Tuesday solicit the help of the United States of America and Britain to use their facilities in the search, adding that it had deployed Fulani cattle herdsmen in the ground search of the Obudu area.
Both NEMA and the state government had complained that search and recovery operations at Obudu area were very difficult due to undulating mountains and hills, deep valleys and ever changing, unfriendly weather.
The topography does not allow search and rescue helicopters to come lower than 7000 above sea level otherwise it would crash on the mountains.
Meanwhile, NEMA says it is resorting to trekking in the bid to locate the missing aircraft.
Mr. David Ashebu, the Agency’s director in charge of Search and Rescue, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja that the agency was resorting to �trekking� after covering the suspected areas by air.
He blamed the delay in locating the missing aircraft on the difficult terrain, saying that the area was mountainous.
�The search by air took us to Cross Rivers, Benue and Ebonyi which are the suspected areas, and now, we are trying to see if we can access those areas by foot. We know that it will take a while to be able to cover the whole areas by foot,” Ashebu said.
He told NAN that the National Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and commercial airlines were assisting NEMA with helicopters to carry out �intensive search”.
�Others, who have also assisted in the search are the local government chairmen in the suspected areas and the army which gives us reports on a daily basis,” he said.
Ashebu said the Agency had yet to seek the assistance of any country in the search and rescue operation.
�We cannot do this until we have exhausted all options at our disposal,” he said.
Ashebu, however, said that an official request had been made to Cameroon �to enable us go into their territory for search”.
�We are still expecting their reply,” he added.
Mar272008