Fury as Obasanjo visits crash site

Mosques and houses were flattened by the airliner

KANO, Nigeria -- Nigeria's president came in for criticism when he paid a fleeting visit to the northern city of Kano where a plane crash killed at least 148 people at the weekend.

Grieving relatives accused the president of insensitivity when Olusegun Obasanjo failed to offer them words of comfort and left shortly after arriving.

"They said he had other appointments. Maybe his appointments were better than us," Habibu Yusuf Hibbu, standing in front of his ruined house, told Reuters.

Obasanjo took residents of the impoverished Gwammaja suburb of Kano by surprise by arriving at the site at 7:00 a.m (0600 GMT) amid tight security. Journalists expecting him later in the day missed the visit.

Gwammaja elder Alhaji Malamai, who lost two children when the BAC 1-11-500 smashed into their home on Saturday, complained about the lightning visit.

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"The president didn't say anything. There was a lot of security and we were pushed on one side. The whole thing lasted only five minutes.

"I am disappointed that he didn't speak to us. I lost two children and I still don't know what happened to them."

Bleary-eyed rescue workers had dragged the remains of at least 148 people from the smouldering wreckage by Sunday. The dead included 75 people on board the plane and dozens of residents killed on the ground. Four people on board survived.

The death toll is expected to rise though as workers -- including Boy Scouts in bright gree uniforms -- on Monday continued to count severed body parts still being recovered.

The army said the country's sports minister was among the passengers killed. A senior Nigerian Football Association official told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper on Monday they had decided to cancel a friendly warm-up match against China on Saturday in memory of Ishaya Mark Aku.

Carrier EAS Airlines reported just four survivors -- a female crew member and three passengers.

Rubble from the EFS plane in the ruined houses of Gwammaja

Obasanjo later visited the palace of Kano's emir, or traditional Islamic ruler, where he pledged 10 million naira ($70,000 dollars) to residents of Gwammaja, the impoverished neighbourhood where the crash occurred. Public and aid groups would "soon be releasing relief materials" to families of the victims, he said.

The Associated Press quoted the leader as saying he would "do all it takes to avert the reoccurrence of such a disaster," although he did not elaborate.

Obasanjo's government recently proposed banning planes over 22 years old, a move that would ground many of the ageing aircraft used by the dozen or more highly competitive private Nigerian airlines vying for a share of passengers in this oil-rich nation of 120 million people.

"This government was highly touched by this unfortunate incident, which claimed such a number of lives," Obasanjo said. "The nation is in a state of grief and a state of mourning."

The EAS Airlines (Executive Airline Services) plane had just taken off on Saturday from Kano, en route to Lagos in the southwestern part of the country, when it crashed.

It went down about 1.2 miles from the airport, crashing into the Gwammaja neighbourhood and erupting into a massive blaze that burned 10 houses, a school in which there were 100 children, and two mosques.

Obasanjo said on Sunday the plane apparently lost power. Speaking to the nation on state radio, he promised a full investigation and ordered flags to be flown at half-mast on Sunday and Monday.

Officials said investigators had been dispatched to the crash site, and that the government was considering asking for international help in its investigation. In a statement, the airline said neither the cockpit voice recorder nor the flight data recorder had been recovered.

The last major Nigerian air crash occurred in November 1996, when a Nigerian Boeing 727 flying from Port Harcourt to Lagos crashed, killing all 142 passengers and nine crew members.