Recovery teams battled swampy terrain in Igbokoda on Tuesday as they searched for the wreckage and victims of a Nigerian Air Force ATR-42 that crashed a day earlier, killing all 25 people on board.
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Footage shows police patrol boats and rescue teams searching waterways around the crash site on October 6, while an excavator moves through the waterlogged terrain.
Rescue personnel and residents are also seen gathering along the riverbank.
“It took the Nigerian Navy first responder team about fifteen minutes before they got to the crash site,” explained volunteer rescuer Akinten Omotaeremi. “There was no road to the site. It took a while before we could get to the crash site – we had to clear vegetation to get there. When we got there, we saw a big impact site in the swamp.”
Fellow rescuer Omotayo Orimisan described the scene that awaited the team upon arrival.
“We didn’t see the plane at all at the crash site, but when we dipped sticks in the crater at the impact site, we could feel it touching something, but we didn’t see it,” he said, noting that human remains had been sighted at the scene.
Eyewitness Erejuwa Sunday described the final moments of the doomed flight.
“The pilot manoeuvred the plane away from the town centre. I thought he probably did that to avoid a crowded place that could get homes destroyed or get people killed,” he said.
The aircraft, tail number NAF 931, crashed near a naval base in Igbokoda on October 5 while flying a routine mission from Benin to Lagos.
The Nigerian Air Force later confirmed that 20 passengers and five crew members were on board and that no survivors had been found, correcting an earlier government figure of 32 people.
President Bola Tinubu declared three days of national mourning and ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, as specialist equipment was deployed to recover wreckage from the swamp.
