How I almost died in plane crash – Lagos SSG

The Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Dr Tunji Bello, has recounted how he was almost killed in a plane crash while working as the Editorial Board Chairman of THISDAY  Newsapers.

Bello, a lawyer, journalist, and politician, disclosed this in an interview with The Punch published on Sunday.

Bello, a former Editor of Concord newspaper, said, “I joined Thisday in January 2001 and in February, together with the publisher of the paper, Nduka Obaigbena, and other staff such as Segun Adeniyi, we went on a series of town hall meetings across the country. There were actually 21 people on the plane. On that particular day, we were going to Maiduguri from Jos and we chartered an aircraft. Unfortunately, the plane crashed in the night and I think it was caused by the weather. The flight was supposed to take about an hour but we were still in the air after two hours. Meanwhile, many of the passengers had slept off. Suddenly, I heard the air hostess asking the pilot what the problem was. I also heard the pilot arguing with the control tower. The visibility was 500, while he had been told that it was 5000. We even passed the airport without knowing and the plane ran out of fuel. Suddenly, we heard a loud sound, then the plane crashed. I thought I had died. I later discovered that I was still alive and there was a lot of dust and sand around. The pilot was thrown from the cockpit and he landed on me. Several of us were injured but there was no casualty. We thank God that the aircraft did not explode, but it was badly damaged. One of us, a lady, actually experienced temporary insanity and she tore off all her clothes. She just kept screaming, “Am I alive?” We were lucky that we crashed into a savannah field. If it was in a forest, we could have hit a tree which would have caused an explosion. It took over an hour for the fire service to evacuate us from the scene. We were taken to the Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. After that, I stayed in Thisday till 2003 when Tinubu asked me to join his cabinet. I have been in government since then.”