*Intrigues As Billionaire Magnates Order Immediate Inspection Of Luxury Jets
On Saturday, September 5, Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, saw death in common hours. And he felt the shivers to the bones. The chubby administrator encountered for the first time, ever, an apparition of the grim reaper. It was clearly different from his rotund shadow striding behind him at dawn or dogging his footsteps at dusk.
On that fateful day, death hissed and winked at Governor Adeleke from the engine compartment of his brother, Adedeji Adeleke’s private jet.
The Osun governor and his aides scurried off the Bombardier Global Express 6000, owned by the prominent business magnate Adedeji, after it lost power in both its engines around 9 a.m., just moments before takeoff, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
The aircraft which had Adeleke and his top aides on board at the time of the incident, had taxied to the end of the runway, shortly before departure, when a loud explosion was heard from the engine of the jet, causing it to abort take-off immediately.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Executive Jets, the company responsible for the jet’s hangar, Sam Iwuajoku, reportedly disclosed that Chief Adeleke’s private jet suffered from Foreign Object Damage (FOD), leading to a surge in engine temperatures and a subsequent explosion.
Iwuajoku further elaborated that the FOD, in this case, was attributed to a bird’s nest lodged within one of the jet’s engines.
But Governor Adeleke disagreed with Iwuajoku’s submission, saying he suspects foul play in the incident.
Shedding light on his traumatic experience, Adeleke expressed strong suspicions of sabotage, asserting that some persons must have tampered with the aircraft’s engines.
His spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, conveyed the Osun Governor’s suspicion, stating, “there are strong indications that the two aircraft engines were tampered with before boarding.”
He noted that “the highly technically equipped aircraft was well maintained with the best technical crew and was never an unused platform where birds could build nests.
“Contrary to the claim by the hanger owner that birds’ nests caused the incident, birds’ nests are made with straws not bidding wires as in this case.”
The incident has, however, sent shock waves of panic through the exclusive club of private jet owners in the country. Most billionaires cum private jet owners have, since, been wary of boarding their own aircraft.
Many have beaten a retreat from the stairs of their expensive jets, calling for a comprehensive check on their aircraft’s engine to prevent any such misfortune from befalling them.
The sudden need for inspection and repairs triggered by the ongoing panic, according to pundits, has set some billionaires back several billions of naira.
Recent findings revealed that Nigeria’s private jet owners now spend about $5m on maintenance annually. This exorbitant cost of maintenance had initially caused a drastic drop in the number of owners of luxury jets from 200 to between 50 and 100, with most of them either selling out their private jets or returning them to their original owners abroad.
Confirming the cost of aircraft maintenance, the president of the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), Engineer Isaac Balami, said in a recent interview that it is very expensive to maintain a private luxury aircraft. Balami said that even though modern aircraft have been able to take care of some of the maintenance by just software applications, the cost of maintaining an aircraft still remains a function of the type of aircraft and the level of specifications certified by the aircraft maker.
Stating that the cost of maintaining an aircraft does not only end at the “C” checks level, he added that there was also a need for pre-flight, post-flight and weekly inspections too, depending on whether the aircraft is Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier or Gulfstream.
Balami who rated Nigeria as the third highest private jet-owning country pointed out that private jet ownership has reduced in recent times, while there still exist a couple of them. His words: “Apart from America and China, Nigeria is the third in private jet ownership all over the world. From the last administration, we had over 200 private jets and so many other orders were made.
“It was growing up, although some people later cancelled their orders because of the recession, especially when everything is done in dollars. France, the UK and other advanced countries do not come near to Nigeria when it comes to private jet ownership.”
As of March 2014, it was reported that Nigerians spent over $6.5 billion dollars on private jets, making it one of the fastest-growing luxury jet industries in the world.
Initially, private jet owners simply had to grapple with the cost of maintenance once a year, but the recent incident involving Governor Adeleke of Osun State has triggered a squall of apprehension among them.
While some pundits dismiss their fears as a natural reaction triggered by a quest for self-preservation, some others give credence to the billionaires’ fears arguing that, in a highly competitive world where most billionaire magnates engage in cutthroat rivalry over the spoils of commerce and political manoeuvrings, nothing could be left to chance.
Nobody wants to die, after all; thus the profound axiom holds that he who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.
By a stroke of luck, what could have been a national tragedy was averted on Tuesday, September 5, 2023, when a private jet owned by billionaire businessman, Chief Adeleke, caught fire at take-off point with the dancing governor, Ademola Adeleke, on board.
