20 years after losing father in Air Force crash, newlywed loses husband in another

By Tolu Temidire

For Flight Lieutenant Damilola Adekunle, September 19, 2026, was supposed to be a day of joy — the beginning of a new chapter with the man she had chosen to spend the rest of her life with.

But barely two weeks after she walked down the aisle, the happiness was shattered by a tragedy that painfully echoed one she had suffered 20 years earlier.

On October 5, 2026, Squadron Leader Ahamefule Aham Man-Ugwueje, her newly-wedded husband, was among the Nigerian Air Force personnel who died when NAF 931 crashed at Igbokoda in Ondo State.

He was serving as the aircraft’s co-pilot.

For Damilola, the tragedy was not simply the loss of a husband. It reopened an old wound — one that had remained with her family for two decades.

On September 17, 2006, her father, Wing Commander E. O. Adekunle, a Nigerian Air Force officer, died in another military aircraft crash in Benue State.

The Nigerian Air Force Dornier 228, carrying senior military officers, crashed around the Oko area of Vandeikya Local Government Area while travelling towards Cross River State.

Thirteen military officers reportedly died in the crash, including Wing Commander Adekunle, who was serving as the aircraft’s co-pilot.

He had left home as a military officer embarking on an official flight.

He never returned.

His death left behind a family struggling to come to terms with the loss of a husband and father, and a daughter who would grow up carrying the memory of a father taken away by an aircraft crash.

Twenty years later, Damilola, now herself a Nigerian Air Force officer, found love within the same military institution that had shaped her father's life.

On September 19, 2026, she married Squadron Leader Man-Ugwueje.

It was a moment that should have represented renewal after years of grief — a new family, a new home and a new beginning.

Instead, only 16 days later, the devastating news came.

Her husband was dead.

He, too, had been a military pilot.

He, too, had left on a military flight.

And, like her father 20 years earlier, he never returned.

The cruel coincidence has left a haunting parallel between two generations of the Adekunle family.

In 2006, Damilola lost her father in a military aircraft crash.

In 2026, she lost her husband in another.

Both men were Nigerian Air Force officers.

Both served as co-pilots.

Both left their families for military flights and returned only as names in the tragic history of Nigeria's military aviation.

The tragedy is further deepened by the military lineage of both families.

Squadron Leader Man-Ugwueje was the son of a retired Group Captain Man-Ugwueje, while his wife is reported to be the daughter of the late Wing Commander E. O. Adekunle.

Two Air Force families.

Two generations.

Two devastating losses.

And for one woman, two men she loved taken away by the same unforgiving fate.

Damilola's story is a painful reminder that behind every military casualty is a family left to carry the weight of an absence that can never truly be filled.

For some families, grief does not end with one funeral. Sometimes, it returns years later, wearing another face and reopening wounds that had barely learned how to heal.

Twenty years after her father died in a military aircraft crash, Damilola had every reason to hope that the darkest chapter of that painful memory belonged to the past.

But just 16 days after her wedding, the past came back with devastating force.

This time, it took her husband.

May the souls of Wing Commander E. O. Adekunle, Squadron Leader Ahamefule Aham Man-Ugwueje and all the other officers who lost their lives in the crashes rest in peace.

For Damilola and both families, however, the silence left behind by those losses may be a sound that never truly fades.