Tinubu orders three days of mourning after all 32 die in the Igbokoda crash

President Bola Tinubu said on Monday that all 32 people aboard a Nigerian Air Force ATR-42 died when the aircraft crashed near the naval base at Igbokoda in Ondo State. His office said he had declared three days of national mourning and directed that flags be flown at half-staff. The Air Force will name the dead only after families have been told.

The aircraft, tail number NGR 931, was on what the presidency and the Air Force called a routine mission from Benin City in Edo State to Lagos. Aviation minister Festus Keyamo said air traffic controllers lost radio contact at 09:13 local time. He later said the wreckage had been found close to the naval base. Early statements from the ministry did not give a casualty figure. By Monday evening the presidency was treating the loss as total.

Keyamo had put the load at 25 passengers and seven crew. That is the figure Tinubu's office used when it extended condolences. Bayo Onanuga, the presidential spokesman, said the three-day mourning was for Air Force personnel who died in the crash. The service, through Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame, its director of public relations, said a search and rescue operation had begun as soon as the accident was confirmed.

What is known about the flight

The ATR-42 is a twin-turboprop used by several air arms for short-haul transport and survey work. Nigerian reporting identified the aircraft as an ATR-42 on a scheduled military movement, not a combat sortie. No official account has given a cause. There is no public statement yet from the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau on whether it will lead the inquiry, or whether the Air Force will run its own board.

Igbokoda sits on the coastal edge of Ilaje local government area, in the creeks of south-western Ondo. The naval base is the nearest large installation. Keyamo's wording, that the wreckage was close to that base, is the only location detail the ministry has put on the record. Residents' accounts have not been incorporated into any official timeline.

Tinubu called the crash a painful moment for the armed forces and for the country. His office did not say whether he would visit Ondo, or when the names would be released. In previous Nigerian military air accidents, names have followed family notification by a day or more. The three-day mourning order is the clearest political marker so far that the government is treating this as a national loss rather than an incident still under count.

Why the early count mattered

The gap between the first reports and the presidency's statement is the part that will shape the inquiry. Controllers lost the aircraft at 09:13. The wreckage was then located. Only after that did the minister confirm the load of 32, and only later did the presidency say all of them had died. Anyone reading the afternoon statements would have been right to treat the death toll as unconfirmed. The evening statement closed that question for the government, even as the Air Force withheld names.

Nigeria has a long record of military air accidents on internal routes. An ATR-42 is not a front-line strike aircraft. A total loss on a Benin-to-Lagos leg, in daylight, with a naval base nearby, will raise ordinary questions about maintenance, weather, and what the crew said before the radio went quiet. None of those answers is public. Keyamo's statement records the failed radio calls and the location of the wreckage. It does not record a mayday, a diversion, or a reported technical fault.

The half-staff order applies across the country, Onanuga said. Three days is a short formal mourning by the standard of a head-of-state funeral, and a long one for a single service accident. It places the crash in the same public register as other events Tinubu has marked with a national pause. Families still do not have names in the official record. That is the next fact the Air Force has said it will supply.

Search and rescue, in Ejodame's wording, was the service's first response. Once the presidency stated that all 32 had died, the practical work shifted from looking for survivors to recovering remains and securing the site for investigators. The ministry has not said whether the wreckage is on land, in creek water, or against the naval perimeter. That detail will decide how fast the recorders, if fitted and recoverable, can be read.

For Ondo, the crash lands on a state that has already spent the year with a separate public-health disaster in Odigbo, where methanol-laced herbal drinks killed dozens. The two events are unrelated. They do sit in the same week of official statements from Abuja about deaths in the south-west. The air crash is the one the presidency has marked with flags.