On Monday morning, a Nigerian Air Force plane left Benin for Lagos on what the military calls a routine mission. Air traffic controllers lost contact with it at about 9:13 a.m. It came down in a swamp near the Naval Base in Igbokoda, Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State. Nobody survived.
Three days later, most of the dead have not been brought home, the plane itself has not been found, and the first official number the country was given turned out to be wrong.
The aircraft, an ATR-42 with tail number NAF 931, carried 25 people: 5 crew and 20 passengers. Nineteen were military personnel. The other six were civilians, including family members of servicemen. Reports say the flight was a logistics run that also gave military families a lift to Lagos.
The Air Force has named all of them. The crew were Squadron Leader MI Aburime, the captain, Squadron Leader AP Man-Ugwueje, Flight Lieutenant IS Bako, Warrant Officer Abubakar A and Corporal Uguru HC. The passengers ranged from flight lieutenants to lance corporals, plus Mrs Ezeh Nneka, Godstmine Tarabina, Joy Micheal, Sunday Micheal, Ukeme David and Gideon Omotola.
It is Nigeria’s deadliest air crash since Dana Air in 2012.
On Monday, the Presidency announced that 32 people had died and declared three days of national mourning. The figure came from Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo’s preliminary statement of 25 passengers and seven crew.
By Tuesday the Air Force had cut it to 25. Its explanation arrived two days after that. Spokesman Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame said civil air traffic controllers and the military count “souls on board” differently, and that “for the military, the 7 is in the 25.”
So for a full day, the President of Nigeria mourned seven people who were never on the plane. It is a small error next to 25 deaths, but it tells you how well the people in charge were talking to each other in the first hours.
The recovery has been slow and grim. The main body of the aircraft has still not been sighted and is believed to be buried in the mud. Clothing, fragments and human remains have been recovered, but more than 48 hours after the crash, sources at the site said no bodies had been pulled from the swamp.
The Navy has brought in side-scan sonar because the water is too murky for divers to see, and the Ondo government has sent two swamp buggies to cut a path in. Aviation fuel is leaking into the surrounding water.
That matters beyond the families. The flight recorders are somewhere in that mud, and without them the investigation has little to work with.
This is the part of the story the Air Force has not addressed. Residents told Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa the plane came in low with a sound like a failing engine, heading for the town. He says the pilot steered it to a swamp about 200 metres from the town centre and credits him with preventing something worse.
Then there is the message. Sergeant Izibenikien Samuel reportedly texted his friend Joseph Oche at about 7 a.m. to say the aircraft had developed a technical fault that delayed the trip. A separate report, citing unnamed sources, claims the plane developed an engine fault on Sunday and was grounded overnight in Benin for repairs.
The Air Force has not confirmed any of it. A military source has described the aircraft as relatively modern and properly maintained. It was reportedly built in 2008 and delivered around 2010.
If the fault reports are true, the question is simple: who signed off on that plane to fly with families on board? The Air Force is investigating itself. Nigeria’s civil accident bureau, the NSIB, says it will not lead because the aircraft is military, though it has offered its investigators and flight data lab. Keyamo and the Air Chief have agreed to set up a joint committee on airworthiness, certification and training.
Nigerians have seen this before. In 2021, three Air Force crashes in five months killed 20 people, including the Chief of Army Staff. The probe into his crash produced 27 findings and eight safety recommendations, and it is still unclear how many were implemented. Full reports are rarely made public. In 2022, President Buhari himself asked the Air Force to publish and implement the reports of past investigations. In July 2025, the Air Force announced a full year without a mishap. Fifteen months later, 25 people are dead on a flight that was not combat and not training.
The Christian Association of Nigeria has demanded a transparent probe, and so have the Arewa Consultative Forum, PANDEF and the PDP. The Air Force says findings will follow a preliminary report. It has given no date.
The mourning period ends today but the search does not. And the families of NAF 931 are owed three things the families of 2021 never fully got: the bodies, the cause, and the report.
