Pius Adesanmi, popular Nigerian professor and columnist based in Canada, was on the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the early hours of Sunday, March 10, 2019.
An Ethiopian Airlines flight between Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, crashed, killing 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard.
It has now emerged that Adesanmi, a native of Isanlu, in Yagba East Local Government area of Kogi State, was among the passengers.
Three different family members, plus a close friend of Adesanmi’s and a Canadian official, confirmed the sad development to news outlets.
His last Facebook post before his death was a quote from the Holy Bible. “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me – Psalm 139:9-10,” he wrote as he shared a photo of himself on March 9, 2019.
Until his death, Adesanmi was a professor of English at Carleton University.
Ethiopian Airlines was deemed the best African carrier last year by UK-based air travel consultancy Skytrax.
It reported carrying more than 10.6 million passengers in its 2017/2018 fiscal year, a 21% increase on the previous year and has a good safety ranking, scoring 6/7, according to Airlines Ratings.
The last major accident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in 2010 when a plane travelling from Beirut in Lebanon to Addis Ababa crashed in the Mediterranean Sea killing all 90 people aboard.
Four years earlier, an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed after being hijacked resulting in the death of 125 out of the 175 people on board.
Additional reports by Euronews.
