The Nigerian Air Force on Tuesday lowered the death toll from its plane that crashed a day earlier to 25 as it released the victims’ names and said no survivors were found.
In one of the country’s worst air disasters in recent years, the air force had on Monday -- the day of the crash -- said 32 people were on board an ATR-42 twin-engine turboprop that went down in a swampy area near a naval base in Ondo State.
President Bola Tinubu later Monday evening said that all 32 people aboard -- 25 passengers and seven crew -- had been killed.
But the air force on Tuesday listed 25 after accounting for all persons on board.
Flight “NAF 931 had 25 persons on board, comprising five crew members and 20 passengers,” Air Force spokesman Ehimen Ejodame said in a statement, adding: “No survivors have been found.”
Civilian family members were travelling aboard the plane. The list showed six names without a military rank prefix.
Tinubu and the military had ordered a probe into the accident.
“The aircraft was on a routine mission from Benin City to Lagos with military personnel and some members of families on board,” Major General Samaila Uba, spokesman for Defense Headquarters, said in a statement Tuesday.
The plane crashed near the town of Igbokoda, located in Ilaje, an oil-producing region in southern Nigeria.
