Recovery teams are still battling swampy terrain to pull out the wreckage of the Nigerian Air Force aircraft that crashed at Igbokoda in Ondo State, killing all 32 people on board, the Ondo State Commissioner of Police, Felix Ohagwu, said on Tuesday.
Ohagwu gave the update after an assessment visit to the coastal community in Ilaje Local Government Area. He said the creeks and mangroves around the site had made both rescue and evacuation extremely difficult, forcing him to use a canoe to reach the spot.
“What happened yesterday was quite unfortunate. It’s a very difficult terrain, the creeks, mangroves, assessing the site of the crash was not easy,” he said. He added that neither the human remains nor the aircraft parts had been fully recovered, and that heavier equipment was needed to lift the wreckage from the water.
According to the commissioner, his men found no sign that anyone survived. He described body parts and passengers’ clothing scattered across the water, and said he would withhold further comment until the relevant agencies concluded their investigation. He noted that the command was awaiting a response from the National Emergency Management Agency and others to bring in larger machinery.
The aircraft, an ATR-42 turboprop with tail number NGR 931, came down on Monday, 5 October 2026, in a swamp opposite the naval base at Igbokoda. The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, said air traffic controllers lost contact with it at about 9.13am while it was flying from Benin to Lagos on what the Air Force described as a routine mission.
Keyamo put the number on board at 25 passengers and seven crew. He stated that the control and regulation of military aircraft fall outside the Ministry of Aviation and the Civil Aviation Authority, but said he had spoken with the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke, and pledged full cooperation with the search effort.
In a statement by its Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame, the Air Force confirmed the crash and said it had activated an immediate search and rescue operation. Accounts from the scene indicated that the flight was a logistics mission that also allowed families of military personnel to travel to Lagos, which is why civilians were among the dead.
Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa confirmed on Channels Television that there were no survivors. He directed the State Emergency Management Agency, the Ministry of Health and security agencies to support the rescue teams, and ordered that the site be cordoned off so responders could work without obstruction. He also suggested that a technical fault, rather than weather, may have been responsible, though he stressed that the cause was still to be established.
President Bola Tinubu declared three days of national mourning and ordered flags flown at half-mast nationwide. In a statement by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the President directed the Air Force to begin a thorough investigation into the cause of the crash in order to prevent a recurrence, and commended the prompt activation of the rescue operation. He called the incident a painful moment for the Armed Forces and the nation.
The traditional ruler of Igbokoda, Oba Afolabi Odidiomo, who visited the scene, said he saw no indication of survivors. He observed that the aircraft did not catch fire but had largely sunk into the water, a detail that helps explain the slow pace of recovery in the days since.
The investigation itself faces an institutional limit. The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau has indicated that it cannot directly probe military crashes unless invited by the Air Force, although its flight safety laboratory is available to assist with flight data analysis. That arrangement places the inquiry firmly within the military, with civilian agencies offering support rather than oversight.
The ATR-42 is a twin-engine turboprop used by the Air Force largely for surveillance and transport duties. The loss of an entire aircraft and all aboard ranks among the heavier single-incident tolls the service has recorded in recent years, and it revives longstanding concerns about the serviceability and maintenance of Nigeria’s military air fleet.
Monday’s disaster also carries an echo of history in the same state. In October 2013, an aircraft conveying the body of a former Ondo governor, Olusegun Agagu, crashed shortly after take-off in Lagos, killing several people, including state officials. That crash, like the present one, drew early attention to technical failure as a possible cause.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow. All 32 people on board died, the wreckage remains partly submerged in difficult terrain, and recovery is continuing. What caused the aircraft to go down is unknown and will depend on the outcome of the Air Force investigation, whose findings have not been released.