Pilots arrested by Wike will be released without prosecution, FG promises, insists Governor lacks power to stop Calverton pilots on national assignment

Hadi-Sirika.jpg

Senator Hadi Sirika, Minister of Aviation.

Share with love

*As Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika vows to ensure their release

 

The Federal Government of Nigeria has once again reiterated its position against arrest of two pilots of Calverton Helicopters on the order of Governor of Rivers State Nyesom Wike, for allegedly making illegal flight into a military air base in Port Harcourt, the state capital, without his permission.

It said the governor ought not to be informed before such flight operation as carried out by the pilots was done into the air force base in the state and therefore promised to get them released as they did nothing wrong.

Making the response during a briefing of the Presidential Task Force Against COVID-19 in Abuja on Friday was the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, who gave a straight talk on the matter adding that they would not only be released but also they would not be prosecuted.

The governor¸ accompanied by some security officers drawn from police and the Air Force, had early in the week personally paid a surprise visit to the office of the private airline operating in the state and demanded for the two pilots that flew the chopper and ordered their immediate arrest by the security officers moment they were presented to him by the company, despite being presented evidence that a Federal agency permitted the flight to carry out a national assignment.

Governor Wike said it was illegal for the pilots to flight strange expatriates into his state without his prior knowledge and, as such, that the company and all human beings involved were agents working for the enemies of the state.  On his order, they were immediately arraigned at Magistrate Court which remanded them in a correctional centre pending the next adjournment.

A day after the arraignment, the governor made a broadcast during which he banished Calverton Helicopters from operating in the state and closed down its offices there saying any investor that pays premium more on profit at the experience of human lives was not welcomed in his state.

But the Minister said: “I want to talk about the two pilots that were arrested in Port Harcourt while they were on national assignment, which was the reason they landed in a military base.”

Without being immodest the Minister said: “I may not be learned but I’m lettered.  On whether or not His Excellency Governor Nyesom Wike ought to know before such Calverton chopper landed in the military base, no, he does not have to know.

“I assure you that the pilots will all be released and that there will not be conviction against them.  That I can assure you is what is going to happen”, he said.

The Aviation Minister noted that the air force who called the governor when the chopper landed in his base acted ignorantly.  The police officer who made the arrest of the pilots acted, also, ignorantly, the minister said, adding that he would not want to blow it all at the occasion.


Share with love
Top