Museveni yet to believe if Garang crash was accident
Mar 27, 2006 (KAMPALA) — President Yoweri Museveni may have received a hefty cheque from the National Insurance Corporation for his ill-fated helicopter that crashed and killed former Sudanese Vice President John Garang, but he is still unconvinced that the tragedy was an accident, government sources told Daily Monitor.
On Friday, Mr Onapito Ekomoloit, the President’s press secretary, said the government would await the report of the international investigation into the crash before pronouncing itself on the matter, even if it has accepted a cheque of $3.4 million (Shs7 billion) from NIC, the insurers of the presidential chopper.
Onapito’s comments came after those by Finance Minister Ezra Suruma that by accepting compensation from NIC, the State would have finally put the matter to rest. The July 2005 crash also killed seven Ugandans including long serving presidential pilot Peter Nyakairu.
“I hope this puts an end to the whole affair,” Suruma said a fortnight ago. “We deeply regret this incident but there was nothing we could do to stop it.”
However, sources tell Daily Monitor, Museveni is “unhappy” about the NIC compensation, which was based on its own internal investigation into the cause of the crash.
A senior government official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue said the President would be hard to convince that other factors were not at play when Garang’s plane came down in bad weather just inside southern Sudan across the Uganda border.
Cause doubted
“The President as a person cannot convince himself that the aircraft with all the instruments it had could simply have come down because of bad weather,” the source said. “He thinks that it was either a fundamental error on the part of the pilot or there was an intervening factor but not weather.”
The source added that it was unlikely that Museveni would be convinced even after the final report by international investigators comes out.
Speaking at a memorial service for Garang in the southern Sudanese town of Yei last year, Museveni became the most high profile leader to demand an investigation that would leave no stone unturned.
“Some people say accident, it may be an accident, it may be something else. The helicopter was very well equipped, this was my helicopter the one I am flying all the time, I am not ruling anything out. Either the pilot panicked… either there was some side wind or the instruments failed or there was an external factor,” he said at the time.
No price for Garang
“Another concern of the President is that no amount of money can replace Garang, who was really an old friend,” the source said.
NIC officials could not be reached for comment about the issue but sources within the company said it would stand by its assessment that the crash was indeed an accident.
“We found out that it was purely an accident,” NIC Managing Director Bola Osasonya had earlier said. He is also said that an insurer will not pay if he has doubts as to the nature of the accident.
It is unclear if the company would have compensated the government if it were revealed that other factors, including pilot error, were responsible for the crash. The NIC investigation is the first report that rules out other factors. It comes ahead of the international probe report that is still being awaited.
The Sudan Tribune reported last week that the report would be handed over to President Omar El Bashir before the end of March. Sudan’s foreign Minister Lam Akol has told the press that the investigators have “completely ruled out the hypothesis of a plot to kill John Garang”, leading to the preliminary conclusion that the report too is likely to conclude that the crash was an accident.
“The government position will be based on the final probe report because it (government) was a party. National Insurance Corporation was clear that it did its own probe,” Onapito said.
(The Monitor)