by S’ola Filani

Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, former governor of Kwara State, Senator Bukola Saraki, former Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Hon. Victor Ochei and other top Nigerian political leaders escaped death by whiskers on a British Airways flight 082 that was struck by thunder while approaching Heathrow International Airport in London on Thursday.

The plane, which left Abuja around 8am on Thursday, was billed to land at Heathrow airport at about 2.30pm, it however hovered for over 40 minutes in the air before heading towards Birmingham airport to have an emergency landing.

“The weather in Heathrow was so bad that after hovering for about 40 minutes without being able to land and with the plane running short on fuel, the pilots took the best decision to head to Birmingham because we had already been hit by a lightning which caused a loud bang in the plane and damaged some electricals,” one of the passengers aboard the flight told Sun News.

The passenger further disclosed that after the emergency landing in Birmingham, Governor Shettima, Saraki and others were kept in the plane for about two hours during which the aircraft was refuelled and an attempt was made at fixing “some engineering issues caused by the thunder.”

When it was certain that the plane could not continue the journey back to London, all the passengers were asked to disembark into three luxury buses at about 6pm which took them by road to London.

The journey by road from Birmingham to London which lasted for about four hours due to traffic jam was said to have left many of the passengers with pre-booked train trips to their destinations outside London stranded.

“Unfortunately, we were left unattended to at Birmingham because BA has no ground staff at Birmingham before we were eventually transported by road and sadly again, we got to London at about 10pm when many people could not go anywhere and still, we had to bear the brunt of looking for accommodation for ourselves. The shock of the loud bang caused by the thunder and the several hours spent both in the air hovering and on the road left many of us weak and sick but our joy is that we survived what could have been a major disaster on the heels of the Boko Haram inflicted tragedies in Nigeria” the passenger revealed.