A Nigeria Air Force helicopter, NAF MI-171, crashed on Monday in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger. Sources say the helicopter was on a mission to evacuate over 10 wounded soldiers who came under an ambush the previous day from local bandits.
There are speculations that the aircraft had come under fire from armed bandits running riot in the north-central states, but this has not been exactly confirmed.
According to the Airforce spokesperson, Air Commodore Edward Gabkwet, the chopper took off from Zungeru en route to Kaduna but crashed near Chukwuba village in the Shiroro Local Government Area, LGA, of the State.
Air Commodore Gabkwet says investigations are still underway to ascertain the number of people on board. He went on,
“Efforts are going on to rescue the crew and passengers on board the helicopter, while preliminary investigations have commenced to determine the probable cause of the crash”.
This crash is certainly not an outlier. There have been quite a couple of them in recent times. The last of such mishap was on February 22, 2021, when seven NAF personnel on their way from Abuja to Minna, the Niger State capital, died when their plane crashed after takeoff from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
