The family of late former Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Agagu, has debunked rumours that the chartered aircraft from Associated Airlines that was conveying Agagu’s corpse, which crashed last Thursday in Lagos was the choice of the family.
The Agagu family in a statement by the deceased’s younger brother, Femi Agagu to clear the air on the controversy surrounding the choice of the airline said: “The contracts for the purchase of the casket, the hiring of the hearse, arrangement for the flying of the corpse from Lagos to Akure, the stage for the lying-in-state as well as the transportation to Iju Odo were between Ondo State Government and MIC as part of the plans to give the former governor a state burial.”
Femi Agau said this in reaction to media reports which alleged that the Agagu family chose the airline, dismissing the reports as “false, wicked and deliberate distortion of obvious facts.”
Femi Agagu said the family knew nothing about how the airline was contracted.
“We appreciate the immense support of the state government since the demise of Dr. Olusegun Agagu. But we would like to state here that we were only invited to point to the type of casket we wanted. Every other arrangements including the flight, lying-in-state and even transportation to Iju Odo were made by the state government and MIC. For anybody to say we chose Associated Airline is total falsehood and we believe such report couldn’t have come from the state government quarters,” even as it commiserated with the families of those who lost their lives in the plane crash.
15 of the 20 passengers and crew on board the aircraft died in the crash. One of the survivors, Samson Hassan, who had been on admission at the Intensive Care Unit, ICU of Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, died on Saturday. There was also anxiety, yesterday, over the deteriorating condition of Taiwo Akintunde, one of the remaining survivors of the crash, who has been under observation at the ICU of the surgical emergency unit of the hospital, and had been permanently under oxygen resuscitation.