The Federal Government will soon grant the Accident Investigation Bureau the authority to investigate marine, rail and road accidents.
The Commissioner, AIB, Mr Akin Olateru, who affirmed this in an interview with journalists, said the bill that would enable the agency to begin multimodal transport accident investigation was already before the Senate.
He said that the Federal Executive Council had in 2018 approved the new draft bill, which when passed, would make AIB one of the agencies in the world engaged in the investigation of all forms of transport accidents.
He said, “We are currently working on going multimodal in our investigations; we will not be investigating only air accidents but will also investigate marine, rail and road accidents.
“We will be joining other nations around the world who operate the multimodal system.
“Hopefully, before the end of this year, this bill will be passed and that will make AIB Nigeria one of the agencies that will be engaged in a multimodal system of investigation in the world.”
Olateru stated that after the passing of the bill, the AIB would take on some workers from railway and maritime sectors and train them on accident investigation.
He said that last year, the AIB had reviewed its regulations to take care of areas that were not included and also reposition the agency for greater tasks.
