Three aircraft incidents in 90 days. Experts say political interference is why.

December 14: a Hawker 800XP crash-landed at Kano airport. December 16: a Cessna 172 crashed approaching Owerri. February 11: an Arik Air Boeing 737 carrying passengers from Lagos to Port Harcourt diverted to Benin after a left engine failure mid-flight.

Aviation experts speaking to THISDAY this week said what the incidents share is not bad luck. It is a regulator that has lost its independence.

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority is legally supposed to be self-funded, autonomous, and beyond political reach. Travellers pay a five percent surcharge on every ticket specifically so the NCAA doesn't need government money and therefore cannot be pressured by government. In practice, the same president who appoints the CBN governor also appoints the NCAA Director-General. The five percent surcharge is now split among multiple agencies, diluting NCAA's funding base. Political appointees manage safety oversight for an industry where the margin for error is zero.

"When an organisation without genuine capability is permitted to maintain aircraft," one expert said, "the risk is not immediate but it is inevitable."

This is the same pattern running through today's other stories. An institution that exists to protect citizens, captured by the political system it was designed to operate independently of. The difference with aviation is that when this institution fails, people don't lose their power or their votes.

They lose their lives.