A male teenager, Samuel Ogundeyi, suspected to be a stowaway, was on Sunday arrested in the tyre compartment of an aircraft at a private general aviation terminal, Execujet, within the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.
Nigeria Tribune reports that the teenager was said to have been discovered at about 12 noon, when pilots of the aircraft, marked M-MYNA, were carrying out a routine inspection on the aircraft before starting the engine.
The commanding pilot was said to have detected the boy in the tyre compartment of the aircraft, while two handsets without sim cards, to which the suspect claimed ownership, were also found in the same compartment.
In his confessional statement, the suspect claimed he had entered the hangar through the facility of the headquarters, Air Defence Corps of Nigerian Air Force, located next to the Presidential/ VIP Lounge in the airport on Saturday night, with the help of a person he identified only as “brother”.
The boy, who spoke in Yoruba and Pidgin English languages, said he was able to cross the runway L18 over to the ExecuJet facility located in the international wing of the airport, a distance of about one kilometre, at night, when he noticed there was no flight landing or taking off on the runway.
The aircraft operated by Tag Aviation was said to have flown in a former Minister of Petroleum, Chief Dan Etete, into the airport on Saturday night and parked at the private hangar, where it was expected to take off on Sunday afternoon before the incident happened.
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